Originally Posted By Javak:
How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

"BEIRUT, Oct 16 (Reuters) - The batteries inside the weaponised pagers that arrived in Lebanon at the start of the year, part of an Israeli plot to decimate Hezbollah, had powerfully deceptive features and an Achilles' heel.

The agents who built the pagers designed a battery that concealed a small but potent charge of plastic explosive and a novel detonator that was invisible to X-ray, according to a Lebanese source with first-hand knowledge of the pagers, and teardown photos of the battery pack seen by Reuters.

To overcome the weakness - the absence of a plausible backstory for the bulky new product - they created fake online stores, pages and posts that could deceive Hezbollah due diligence, a Reuters review of web archives shows.

The stealthy design of the pager bomb and the battery’s carefully constructed cover story, both described here for the first time, shed light on the execution of a years-long operation which has struck unprecedented blows against Israel's Iran-backed Lebanese foe and pushed the Middle East closer to a regional war."

Originally Posted By Prime:
Escape from the meat grinder: the making of a Russian deserter
Thousands are refusing to go into battle for Putin. These are two of their stories

Oct 11th 2024


By Arkady Ostrovsky

The house was one of the few in Bakhmut that still had a roof. Rucksacks, rifles and dirty clothes were strewn across the floor. Stepan wished he was alone in the makeshift base, and tried to block out the chatter of the dozen or so other soldiers. He had not washed or shaved for weeks. His clothes were almost black – encrusted in the heat with sweat, blood and mud. An itchy rash had spread all over his body, but Stepan had decided he wasn’t going to clean himself until this was all over. He couldn’t imagine when that would be.

From August 2022 to May 2023, Bakhmut was the site of ferocious fighting between Russia and Ukraine. Stepan had just spent two hellish weeks on the front line, before managing to drag himself back to base. Now he’d been ordered to return to the meat grinder. “I lost faith and I lost hope and I certainly lost trust in any of the commanders,” he said.

He went down into the pitch-black cellar which served as a dormitory. The air was close and smelled of mould. He lay on a bunk and closed his eyes – but he could not sleep, despite the fact that he had been awake for days. Eventually he got out of bed, returned upstairs and sat by himself at the table, trying to put his mind in order. He thought of the cross he always wore around his neck, which he had lost wading through a swamp. The next day he would be expected to take part in an assault on the Ukrainian trenches. “I knew I would not come out alive.”

“I lost faith and I lost hope and I certainly lost trust in any of the commanders”

Stepan picked up a grenade fuze – a small tube that contains the explosives with a ring attached to it. He walked outside to a shed, closed the door and imagined what it would feel like were he to pull the ring. But he didn’t.

Instead, he put the fuze in his pocket and went to join the other soldiers preparing for the assault. Quad bikes dropped the men off by a copse near a railway line. From there, they were to advance directly towards the Ukrainian positions in small groups. Stepan sat under a tree while others scouted ahead. He stared intently in front of him in order to “work himself into a daze and switch off from reality”. Then he took out the fuze and pulled the ring.

I first met Stepan this May in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. He is in his early 20s but, lacking facial hair, he looked younger. His eyes were piercing and his fingers long and delicate. He wore a zip-up fleece, even though it was t-shirt weather. It had been only a few days since he escaped from Russia. During the daytime he slept; his nights were spent scrolling through social media, brooding over his ordeal. He seemed nervous, and kept looking down at the table. Eventually he ordered a glass of sweet liquor: “Otherwise I won’t be able to tell you anything,” he said.

Stepan is one of more than 1,000 men who have deserted from the Russian army with the help of a volunteer group called Idite Lesom (this translates literally as “Go through the forest”, but colloquially means “Get lost”). Idite Lesom has also helped tens of thousands of Russians dodge the draft. The organisation says the number of requests from potential deserters rose tenfold from January 2023 to January 2024. Two-thirds of these deserters have left the country, primarily for Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan – states that allow Russians to enter without a passport. The rest are hiding in Russia. Most western countries offer little help.

There is no precise figure for the total number of Russian deserters, but it is clearly increasing. In the first seven months of 2024, the Russian army prosecuted 5,200 soldiers for going absent without leave (awol) – more than in the entirety of 2023. Many of these cases end with suspended sentences, so that the accused can be sent back to the front. The size of the Russian army in Ukraine is about 540,000 men, and the rate of desertion is around 2.5% – the same rate as the German army experienced during the second world war.

On the Ukrainian side, some 100,000 men are said to have absconded, and the rate of desertion and unauthorised absence may be as high as 10%. On a recent trip to Ukraine I met two men who had fled from the front, along with half of their 700-strong brigade. Neither wished to be cannon fodder. “I am not a cat. I don’t have nine lives. I only have one life,” one told me. Idite Lesom is now getting requests for help from Ukrainian soldiers and draft-dodgers, which they turn down on principle. Grigory Sverdlin, its founder, explains that his volunteers are not pacifists but part of the resistance to Vladimir Putin’s war.

Most Russian deserters are neither conscientious objectors nor ardent opponents of the regime. They are ordinary men who trusted their government and accepted its edicts, because that’s what they had always done. Sverdlin believes such soldiers deserve his help, even if their desire to flee the battlefield is not primarily driven by conscience: “What matters is the fact that the deserters no longer want to participate in this war, not how they got involved in it.” The deserters I have spoken to tended to have three things in common: a close brush with death, an almost mystical sense that they were saved, and a strong motivation to keep living.

They are ordinary men who trusted their government and accepted its edicts, because that’s what they had always done

Over the past quarter-century, Vladimir Putin has embraced war as Russia’s national destiny and fostered a cult of death in which he has equated bravery with indifference to life. In totalitarian regimes the fear of death acquires meaning beyond the instinct of self preservation – it is a reassertion of humanity. According to Olga Fedyanina, a Russian expert on 20th-century German history, “Fear of the state can paralyse people. The fear of death can bring them out of this paralysis and give them courage to act,” she told me.

War has not always been glorified in Russia’s recent history. Elena Racheva, a sociologist at the University of Oxford, has explained how the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and Russia’s first war in Chechnya in the mid-1990s, were perceived at home as blunders. Russian soldiers – most of them conscripts – were treated as victims of politics rather than heroes.

From the beginning of his rule, Putin changed his narrative. He recast the humiliations of Afghanistan and Chechnya as audacious sequels to the great patriotic war of 1941-45 – as Russians call the second world war. He controlled the media coverage of the second Chechen war, fought between 1999 and 2009, and ensured that it became regarded as a heroic saga in the public imagination. In 2020, a much-mythologised last stand by a band of Russian paratroopers in Chechnya was commemorated with a huge military festival. This involved a musical with a chorus line dressed in uniform, dancing with Kalashnikovs and firing intermittently at the ceiling.

The same year, a vast cathedral dedicated to Russia’s armed forces was inaugurated in Moscow. A Byzantine-style monstrosity in khaki-coloured stone, its floor was made from melted-down German tanks. The dome was decorated with mosaics and stained glass commemorating Russian military escapades, including the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the intervention in Syria’s civil war.

Putin has exploited a national disposition to see lack of care for one’s life as a virtue. As he said recently, “I think only our people could have come up with the famous saying: ‘Death is beautiful when you’ve got people around you [watching]’. How come? Death is horrible, isn’t it? But no, it appears it may be beautiful if it serves the people. Death for one’s friends, one’s people or for the homeland…Many peoples have their own advantages but this is certainly ours.”

At the beginning of 2022 Stepan was 21 years old and working as a mechanic at Norilsk Nickel, one of Russia’s largest mining firms, located 300km north of the Arctic Circle on the site of a former gulag. The climate was bitterly cold and the air was toxic. When the wind blew, Stepan’s throat would itch and he could taste sulphur in his mouth. Stepan did not plan to work there long – he wanted eventually to move back to Bashkiria, a region in central Russia where he was born before his family moved to Norilsk. He was only four months away from qualifying for a mortgage and dreamed of starting a family of his own if he could find the right woman. Perhaps he would study engineering in the Czech Republic. Politics didn’t preoccupy him. “I wanted everything to be normal and Putin did not have much influence on the lives of the young people.” He obeyed the rules and accepted the existing order like the weather.

Then, in February 2022, Putin launched his “special military operation” in Ukraine. Stepan believed that it would last only a few days, since Russian troops were already near Kyiv.

So, too, did Putin.

But Ukrainian resistance was more vigorous than expected, and Russia was forced to retreat from Kyiv and Kharkiv. In September that year Putin declared a partial mobilisation – the first since the second world war – as he realised this would become a war of attrition. Like most large enterprises in Russia, Norilsk Nickel, nominally a private firm, is controlled by an oligarch loyal to Putin. The company was obliged to provide a certain number of employees to the army, just as 18th- and 19th-century landlords supplied their serfs for the tsar’s wars.

Vladimir Putin has embraced war as Russia’s national destiny and fostered a cult of death in which he has equated bravery with indifference to life

Stepan was unlucky that his last name starts with an A: “They probably just picked up a bunch of files that were close to the top.” A member of the local military commissariat delivered his mobilisation papers to his front door. The foreman from the plant accompanied her, shook Stepan’s hand and said, “It’s just the way things go.” Stepan was now a mobik – a derogatory word used to describe the hundreds of thousands of Russian men used as cannon fodder. Most of them did not join enthusiastically but neither did they resist with ardour. “I was always told to go with the flow and not stick my head out,” Stepan said.

This attitude has been at the heart of Russian culture for centuries. In 1893, on his way to his country estate, Leo Tolstoy observed a train full of soldiers. The men were “for the most part good, kind, even tender-hearted fellows”, yet they were willingly going off to put down a revolt of famished peasants just a few miles away. “Why do they do it? What forces them to believe that the existing order is unchanging and they must support it?” he asked in “The Kingdom of God is Within You”, his treatise on non-violence. Tolstoy concludes that fear of the state compels people into the army – and the might of the army sustains the coercive power of the state.

Tolstoy’s observations remain relevant today. “I was more scared of going to jail than I was of going to war, because at the time I could not imagine anything scarier than jail,” Stepan said. Opinion polls suggest that people fear violence at the hands of the state more than they fear poverty, illness or even dying itself.

War and death in Russia have become a commercial enterprise. Men who have been mobilised receive a monthly salary of 200,000 roubles – three times the average. Those who sign up voluntarily get more. The signing-on bonus is about $5,000 – 40% more than at the start of the year – though in some regions it can reach $30,000. The army does not just provide cash – it also offers status, debt write-offs, tax breaks, child care and exemption from criminal prosecution. And for many people the death of a son or father brings a great fortune as well as pride: the family of a slain soldier can receive up to 15m roubles ($150,000) in recompense.

Russia is now spending 1.5% of its gdp on soldiers and their families, though the sharp increase in signing-on bonuses suggests that Putin is running out of willing volunteers. Nonetheless, tens of thousands of Russian men have come to see the war as a remunerative if gruelling job, akin to working in a remote oilfield or mine.

The morning after Stepan received his papers, he was told by an officer at the mustering point that he was being mobilised to “defend the motherland”. He and his family knew this was a lie, but went along with it. They spent the rest of the day shopping for necessities that they knew the army would not provide: boots, warm clothes, a sleeping mat, a dumb phone, painkillers, a rucksack.

The company was ordered to provide a certain number of employees to the army, just as 18th- and 19th-century landlords supplied their serfs for the tsar’s wars

Stepan’s father saw him off the day after – his mother stayed at home as “it was just too much for her”. Patriotic music blasted out of loudspeakers, as the young men were loaded onto buses and taken to Norilsk airport. Nobody told them where they were going; none of the new recruits felt compelled to ask.

They were flown to Omsk, a city in Siberia, for training, and dumped outside a hangar while they waited to be assigned to their units. They camped in the open air and made fires to keep warm. Stepan, who had done a year’s compulsory national service when he was 18, found the training extremely basic: an occasional run, lessons in first aid, and instruction on how to strip down and reassemble a Kalashnikov. Much of this was staged for the benefit of a television crew that wanted to film well-fed, well-equipped reservists excitedly preparing “day and night”.

All the recruits were given an abridged Bible and a pamphlet of patriotic propaganda, which stated that Russian soldiers were “fighting on the side of Good…against Ukrainian nationalism and world Satanism.” It ended with a quote from Putin: “We will go to heaven as martyrs and they will die like animals.” Stepan told me he felt repulsed. “I don’t know who this propaganda is made for…imbeciles?”

Stepan was assigned to the 83rd Air Assault Brigade based in Nova Kakhovka, a Ukrainian town in the south-east of the country that had been occupied by Russian forces since the beginning of the invasion. Shortly after arriving there, he searched for his unit on the internet and learned that soldiers who had served in this brigade had slaughtered dozens of civilians in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, and been involved in atrocities in Mariupol.

Some of his comrades boasted of their brutality to prove their toughness. One told Stepan how he had sometimes killed children in Mariupol, fearing that they might throw a grenade or shoot at him. Recalling the conversation, Stepan struggled to speak. “I can’t remember the details,” he said, averting his eyes.

Stepan sought out “normal” soldiers to patrol his patch with him – a village 10km east of Nova Kakhovka called Raiske (which translates as Paradise). He did not encounter any resistance from the locals. Those who objected to Russia’s occupation had long since fled. A drunk soldier living in his house boasted about raping a woman across the street. (The woman pressed charges and the man soon disappeared.)  Stepan felt he had missed his chance to escape this dire situation and had no way out: “I felt I was going mad.”

On New Year’s Eve, Stepan was sent to Enerhodar – the site of the Zaporizhia nuclear-power station – to defend it against a Ukrainian attack. The soldiers were housed in a bunker deep underground and disguised as power-plant workers in a futile attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who were allowed in by the Russians to assure the safety of the plant. “It was a ridiculous sight,” he said. “Some guys with machineguns in white dressing gowns and helmets.”

Stepan was unlucky that his last name starts with an A: “They probably just picked up a bunch of files that were close to the top”

At Enerhodar, Stepan was put in charge of a captured armoured vehicle in need of fixing. He had no idea where to begin, and was overcome by the fear of failure. Psychologically, he said, these were among the most difficult months of war so far. “I did not yet know the fear of death, because I had not seen it close up.” But he knew the time would come soon. One day his commander shaved his head and said, “We need to turn you into a killing machine.”

Some deserters are most struck by the horror of the war, others by its absurdity. The Russian state crushes many of those whom it exploits. But it also breeds an anarchic streak that allows enterprising individuals to dodge its reach.

Victor was a good-looking, streetwise 33-year-old car mechanic from Magadan, a port city in the far east of Russia. Years in a harsh environment far from Moscow had taught him how to rely on his own devices. On his call-up papers, he scribbled protests against his enlistment but told himself that he would always be able to wriggle out of his obligations if he needed to. “I thought that if they sent me to the rear – as they promised – I would slack off. And if they send me to the front, I would run away.”

In fact, he was tasked with operating a tank, but had to wait for over a month for one to become available. The first consignment of T-80s – designed in the 1960s, built in the 1980s and rusting in the tank graveyards – arrived in December 2022. But they were far from battle-ready. They had turrets, cannons and treads, but no communication systems and no gun sights. Crucially, only two out of the ten had working engines. The tanks were transported to the village of Respublika, just north of Mariupol, where Victor spent several weeks fixing them up.

This was not a front-line assignment, but it was still dangerous. Shortly before he arrived, two mechanics had been badly injured when a shell exploded inside a rusty cannon. The first time Victor tested whether his tank could fire, he tied a rope to the trigger and yanked it tentatively from the outside.

Once the tank was in working condition, he and two comrades were deployed to Fedirivka, a village in the Zaporizhia region. They saw no action and were largely left to their own devices. But the war seemed to find them. On one occasion an uncharacteristically friendly local offered them a lift to the local market. “He kept asking questions and telling us that he wholeheartedly supported Russia,” Victor recalled.

That night, several houses on Victor’s street got hit by mortar fire. Victor and his crew hid in a shelter outside, but a salvo intended for them hit the home of a local couple instead, blowing the man’s arm off. “We put him in a tank and drove him to a hospital,” Victor said. The “helpful” local must have passed on intelligence about the group’s location to the Ukrainian army. In the morning, Victor and his crew reported the informant to Russia’s security service. He was arrested and no one saw him again. After this incident, Victor and his pals invested in a second-hand Lada.

Victor felt no hostility towards the Ukrainian prisoners-of-war he encountered and did not regard them as enemies. (Indeed, Victor’s maternal grandfather was Ukrainian; before the war he had often visited relatives nearby.) “My own country did more harm to me than these Ukrainian men. Why should I hate them?” he said.

In the winter of 2023 Victor’s tank brigade was ordered to fire upon a village controlled by Ukrainian forces. Victor drove towards the front line. But he had seen what happened when civilians were subject to imprecise bombardment. He had no intention of killing people he had no animosity towards. Instead he raised the barrel, removed the detonator and fired shells into the air. Having wasted all the ammunition, he decided to wreck the tank. “I pulled off the bolts from the oil pump, bled the oil and screwed up the transmission.” By the time the tank had crawled back to Fedirivka, it was only good for scrap metal.

Stepan was now a mobik – a derogatory word used to describe the hundreds of thousands of Russian men used as cannon fodder

He seemed to get away with his sabotage. Indeed, it made his situation cushier. Without a tank, Victor spent the rest of that year repairing vehicles. In December he went back to Magadan for two weeks leave. He considered whether he should take the opportunity to go awol – but was scared, above all, of ending up in prison. He presumed he would return to his safe job as a mechanic in the rear. Then in February 2023 he was told he was being transferred to an assault unit.

Towards the end of spring 2023, Russia finally took Bakhmut after a battle that lasted more than seven months and took the lives of 20,000 Russian soldiers. The charge was led by the Wagner Group, a mercenary outfit. After the conquest, responsibility passed to the Russian army. Stepan’s brigade was pulled out of the relative quiet of Zaporizhia to replace the mercenaries.

They were deposited in a small house on the edge of Bakhmut. That evening, an officer informed the soldiers that they would attack the Ukrainians the following morning. “They told us not to drink, but everybody was drinking, because of this enormous stress,” said Stepan. “We even found an old grill and fried up some meat.” To get the men in the right frame of mind, their sergeant showed them a film he had downloaded onto his phone – a gut-churning documentary called “Purgatory” about Russia’s war in Chechnya.

Their mission was to advance in small squads of between five and ten men across the front line and skirmish with Ukraine’s defenders. Most of the soldiers would be obliterated before they got a chance to engage the enemy. Those who did were expected to fight until they were killed. Then another wave would be sent forward. And then another, until the Ukrainian forces were driven out.

All Stepan could make out was a road sign that said Bakhmut. Beyond it lay a smouldering ruin. “The smog was so thick, you could barely see – and it never lifted.” The air tasted metallic. It was dark when they were dropped off by a treeline. The artillery fire – distant the night before – was now close and appeared to be trained on them. Drones circled overhead and cluster bombs exploded around them.

His squad took shelter in the cellar of the only building they could see that was still standing. Boxes of ammunition served as beds. On the following evening, they were ordered to dash towards the Ukrainian trenches and clear them. The commander selected the first group. “He looked at me but decided to leave me behind,” Stepan said. “He probably took pity on me. Perhaps he thought I was not ready.” As he recounted this moment, Stepan started involuntarily tapping his knee with his hand. The drags on his vape grew deeper and more frequent.

“The first fire group went ahead and by the evening radioed back that the fire was too intense, and they would carry on the next day.” The rest of the unit never saw them again. The second group sent to resupply the first one also never returned. Once, a soldier from an advance party rushed inside the cellar, “his eyeballs popping out of sockets from an excess of adrenaline”.

Three days later just five soldiers, including Stepan, remained in the cellar. The building came under artillery fire and shrapnel pierced the roof. The Ukrainian forces had evidently identified their base. An officer handed out tranquillisers to calm the troops. But the real fear set in when the artillery stopped – it meant that the cellar was about to be stormed. The officer in charge decided to pull everyone out before it happened.

One day his commander shaved his head and said, “We need to turn you into a killing machine”

They regrouped in another house, and Stepan was told it was his group’s turn to attack the Ukrainian trenches. “Our morale was at rock bottom. Everyone was in panic and refused to go.” A senior officer – accompanied by a military prosecutor – told them that they could, of course, decline to take part in another assault. But that would mean they would be sent to Storm-Z, a punishment battalion made up of convicts who were forced to clear minefields by marching through them.

When it was clear no one wanted to take this option, the commanders staged an oath-swearing ritual. “They took us to some dug-out, gave us pieces of paper, turned on a video camera and told us to read the text out loud and sign,” said Stepan. The words of the oath ran: “I, [insert name], despise weakness and fear, pledge never to retreat and fight to the last drop of blood.” Stepan felt as if he were falling into a hole. “I felt completely helpless and could not influence anything.”

Yet Stepan was not sent straight to his death. At the last minute, a senior officer decided that simply forcing the recalcitrant soldiers back to the front would be pointless. Instead Stepan was sent to a camp in the occupied Ukrainian province of Luhansk to be trained by Wagner Group mercenaries.

The conditions there were almost as bad as on the front line. The mobilised soldiers were made to run 10km a day in scorching heat while being chased by drones that dropped live cluster grenades. One of the soldiers had his legs blown off when he tripped over a mine. The men slept on the open ground, getting soaked when it rained.

After a week of training, Stepan’s company was replenished with fresh recruits  – some as young as 19 – and sent back to Bakhmut. What followed were “the longest two weeks in my life,” Stepan said. The company took shelter in the cellar of a ruined house. Some 60 metres away stood the brick carcass of a building that served as an observation post and firing position. Soldiers took turns manning it. But sometimes the fire was so precise and intense that they were not able to swap positions for days.

On one occasion Volodya, a man whom Stepan had grown attached to, ran back to the cellar to change places with him. He was opening the metal door at the top of the stairs when a mortar landed next to him. A brick flew off a wall and hit Volodya, sending him tumbling down the steps. When he landed on the floor, his guts were spilling out of his stomach. “We stood there in some stupor. I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Stepan. “We were told not to touch any organs if people get this kind of wounds, but somehow he just managed to turn and the insides fell back in. I seized the opportunity and started bandaging him.” Stepan then injected him with promedol, a powerful opioid, and called for medics to evacuate him.

Hours passed but no one came. Soon they ran out of painkillers. Volodya kept asking for a drink; all Stepan had was some stale water in his flask, which he let him sip from the lid. Every couple of minutes Stepan lit up another cigarette. After eight hours the evacuation team arrived nearby and Stepan helped carry Volodya out of the cellar on an improvised stretcher. The injured soldier was pale, cold and delirious.

The mobilised soldiers were made to run 10km a day in scorching heat while being chased by drones that dropped live cluster grenades

Stepan needed finally to take his post at the firing position. When he got to the shell-blasted building, he discovered that his commander and three others had been killed or wounded there. Soon he ran out of ammunition. Stepan and the rest of the platoon returned to the house and huddled in the basement. The radio battery was dead. “I resigned myself to the fact that it’s probably over. We lost our communications. We didn’t know who’s ahead, who’s behind.” He was strangely calm amid the chaos. He smoked and wondered whether he’d be taken prisoner or killed by a grenade thrown through the door. “I did not have any thoughts and felt ready to go to the other world, quietly.”

After a night of bracing themselves for a Ukrainian assault that never came, Stepan and the remaining soldiers decided on their own initiative to retreat. Avoiding the road, they beat a path through bushes until they came to a swamp. They waited until the rain set in and the clouds blinded the drones, then began to cross it. The bog stank. Weighed down by weapons and ammunition, Stepan was nearly submerged. Eventually Stepan made it back to a hospital behind the lines, where he learned that Volodya had died.

Stepan was examined by the doctors. On discovering that he had no injuries, they packed him off to the ranks. Once again, Stepan and the rest of his platoon found themselves in Bakhmut, in one of the few houses that still had a roof. The political commissar joked that if they wanted to avoid the battle they would need to break their arms. Stepan was wondering if that was just a joke when he noticed the grenade fuze.

Later that day, the commissar brought energy bars and fresh socks to encourage the men. As he sat under a tree and he slotted ammunition into his gun, Stepan decided he was not going to risk death this time. He smoked compulsively as he waited and fondled the fuze he had stashed in his pocket. When he was ordered to advance, Stepan pulled the fuze out and tugged the ring.

The fuze had a two-second delay programmed into it. Stepan pressed his sweaty palm to a tree in order “to direct the force of the explosion”. He felt the heat building up and smelled his own skin burn. The soldiers heard a bang, turned around and saw a bleeding stump on Stepan’s hand. Stepan did not cry out. In the shock he felt no pain. No one bothered to look for the thumb. The soldiers must have known what he had done but did not ask any questions; they just injected him with a painkiller, bandaged his hand and called for an evacuation. He was taken back to hospital in Bakhmut – this time with a palpable wound – and then transferred to Rostov, a city in Russia to the south-east of Ukraine.

His mother came to visit him. She “cried and I was just standing there with a stone face, not knowing how to respond. I just did not feel anything – I hadn’t since the time I had decided to pull the ring.” He felt raw physical pain but the emotional numbness did not lift when he flew back to Norilsk. “I thought I would be happy to go home, but it was as if everyone was a stranger there. I felt no empathy, no connection with anyone – I just tried to imitate the emotions.”

After a short period of leave, he returned to a military base in Russia’s far east, hoping he would be decommissioned. Instead he was told that his injury was not considered serious enough for him to be released. In two weeks, he would be sent back to Ukraine. That was when he decided to desert.

“I thought I would be happy to go home, but it was as if everyone was a stranger there. I felt no empathy, no connection with anyone – I just tried to imitate the emotions”

Stepan worked out a plan. He got a plane ticket to Bashkiria, his home region, and flushed his phone down the toilet. “I just wanted to get as far as possible from the military base.”

He bought a second-hand phone and a new sim card and sent a message through a fake social-media account to a friend in Norilsk, asking him to tell his parents not to look for him.
He spent the next two months in hiding in Bashkiria. He met a young woman – “I was not completely indifferent to her,” he said – and told her what had happened. She rented a room for him in her name. Mostly he stayed inside, watching anti-war videos on YouTube, which was how he learned about Idite Lesom. The same day Stepan got in touch with the organisation, more in hope than expectation of help. They responded almost immediately and, after verifying his identity, gave him instructions for what to do next.

He needed money to make his escape but the authorities identified him from his digital footprint when he used his bank card at an atm. His friend in Norilsk told him the officials were looking for him, asking relatives and acquaintances to bring him back so that he could redeem himself on the battlefield.

Stepan had to move fast. On advice from Idite Lesom, he bought a train ticket to a Russian city bordering a former Soviet republic that admits Russian citizens without passports. (The place names need to be kept secret to protect Idite Lesom’s operations.) Idite Lesom told him not to book a hotel once he was out of the country, so he slept on a bench in the rain. The next morning he went to the airport and bought a ticket to Yerevan – this time with cash.

It was not until Stepan stepped off that plane in Yerevan and passed through border control that he felt a sense of relief. He got into a taxi and asked the driver to take him to the nearest hotel. Overcome by exhaustion, he fell into a deep sleep. Twenty-four hours later, he woke up, famished, and went out to get a kebab.

Victor’s defection was much less gory. He and two of his comrades simply refused to join the assault brigade, saying they would prefer to go to jail. They were dumped in an L-shaped pit, five metres deep, to await arrest and prosecution. This was the moment when they finally decided to desert – they had no intention of braving a Russian prison. “We just said to each other, let’s get the hell out of here.”

When it got dark, Victor and his two comrades, driven by force of will, climbed out by grappling onto the roots of the trees and excavating handholds in the mud. After two hours of walking in the dark, Victor managed to find his car, which he had hidden in the woods. The men changed into civilian clothes, washed the mud off the car and ripped off its military markings.

Once in Mariupol, they crossed into Russia on foot. Victor then took a train to Magadan to see his girlfriend. She broke up with him on the spot. “It was not because she was patriotically minded, but because she did not want to have any problems,” Victor said. She did not even let him stay with her. An acquaintance helped him rent a house outside the city, but the army started looking for him. So he flew to Moscow and, with the help of Idite Lesom, left Russia. “I felt I had been chewed up and spat out,” he said.

It took a few months for Victor to make his way to Germany, where he gave himself up and sought political asylum. He ended up in Ellwangen, a refugee camp that had provided a haven to Poles and Ukrainians during the first and second world wars. Victor found himself cheek by jowl with Ukrainian draft-dodgers. “We got on well,” he said.

This was the moment when they finally decided to desert. “We just said to each other – let’s get the hell out of here”

Germany has historically been compelled to grapple with the problem of desertion more than any other European country. Around 400,000 soldiers deserted the Wehrmacht in the second world war. It was not until the turn of this century that they were cleared of treason. Since then monuments to unknown deserters have been erected across the country.

One known deserter was Alfred Andersch, a novelist who absconded in 1944, while fighting in central Italy against the Allied advance up the peninsula. In his memoir, “The Cherries of Freedom”, he writes that his determination to defect did not stem simply from his desire to avoid death: it was also a gesture of defiance against the totalitarian system that was oblivious to the value of his life and the lives of others. “At a certain moment I chose to act in a way that gave meaning to my life, and from that time on that action became the axle around which the wheel of my existence revolved.” He wandered away from the slaughter through valleys and wheatfields, plucking wild cherries that “tasted fresh and tart”.

Stepan’s escape was less bucolic. As he endured a jittery wait to leave Russia he composed in his head the speech he would make in court if he was captured. Its language was less hifalutin than Andersch’s, but its sentiment was the same. “I was very proud when I fucked up my finger. For the first time in my life I resisted the system. I decided to live my own way – without any guarantees from the state, without anything. Because it all looked so stupid. I mean, how can you die for nothing? For some abstract idea that I didn’t support in any way. It just didn’t make any sense to me. If I am to die, at least I would want to die the right way.”  ■●

Arkady Ostrovsky is The Economist’s Russia editor

The names of the deserters have been changed to protect their identities. Our podcast, The Weekend Intelligence, will have an episode on Russian deserters

https://www.economist.com/1843/2024/10/11/escape-from-the-meat-grinder-the-making-of-a-russian-deserter

Originally Posted By absael:

I hope will it be at least that long.

I know Xi said 2027, but he knows that we're preparing as he is.  Honestly, I think he could probably do it tomorrow and would still be successful.

I'm looking at all those ships surrounding Taiwan, many of which are certainly military ships with disguised missile launchers (and/or troop landers of some sort) masquerading as civilian vessels, and I'm thinking "How the fuck are we going to stop that?"

Originally Posted By CMOS:



We now have 3 Hot Spots around the world, and getting hotter.   Add to that a complete lack of any Leadership.  Things do not look good for this world right now.



CMOS  

Originally Posted By HIPPO:

According to a Source who spoke with CNN, Israel’s Retaliatory Strike against Iran is now ready.

OSINTdefender  (@sentdefender) October 16, 2024

reported about 45 mins ago.

Originally Posted By HIPPO:
Posted a few mins a go. Developing. Will post more info as I see it.

\uD83C\uDDFA\uD83C\uDDF8\uD83C\uDDFA\uD83C\uDDE6 USA announces $425 million military aid to Ukraine:

— additional air defense capability,
— air-to-ground munitions,
— armored vehicles and critical munitions to meet Ukraine's immediate needs. pic.twitter.com/8x8SHTzpjY

— MAKS 24 \uD83C\uDDFA\uD83C\uDDE6\uD83D\uDC40 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) October 16, 2024

Originally Posted By HIPPO:
Looking for additional sourcing on this one:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GaAalgyXYAEFuM7?format=jpg&name=large

BREAKING:

Qatar's prime minister and foreign minister lashes out against the U.S.

Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani has stated that Qatar won't allow the American Al Udeid airbase on its soil to be used to start a war against countries in the region.

Al Udeid is the largest… pic.twitter.com/UxJBPJTKMX

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 16, 2024

There are other options.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GaArYLtWwAAA_kh?format=jpg&name=large

#Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met King Abdullah II of #Jordan in Amman to discuss the regional tensions. pic.twitter.com/zMWUTvQKlT

Iran Nuances  (@IranNuances) October 16, 2024

According to @WallaNews, Israel has invested billions in preparations for a potential strike on Iran, developing specialized munitions that the U.S. either lacks or declined to provide. These include long-range missiles launched by fighter jets and advanced bunker busters. The…

Open Source Intel  (@Osint613) October 15, 2024

new shit on-deck

Originally Posted By fike:


Breaking it down to core emotions, they aren’t scared of Russia anymore.

Originally Posted By 9mmstephen:


Bold statement without facts.

Originally Posted By ITCHY-FINGER:

A strong leader would tell them to STFU. Xiden will probably send money or military aid. And also put new restrictions on Israel.

Originally Posted By HIPPO:
Spicy. May have been posted but, damn, worth a watch (again and again). 2 min video posted 10+ hrs ago.

Two German-made Marder 1A3 of the Ukrainian 225th Bataillon prowling through the Russian Kursk region and clearing with their 20mm auto cannons tree lines from Russian infantry. You can see incoming missiles from the Russian lines, but they obviously miss.

Source: Telegram /… pic.twitter.com/aVRjHz6Rym

— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) October 16, 2024

Originally Posted By HIPPO:
Looking for additional sourcing on this one:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GaAalgyXYAEFuM7?format=jpg&name=large

BREAKING:

Qatar's prime minister and foreign minister lashes out against the U.S.

Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani has stated that Qatar won't allow the American Al Udeid airbase on its soil to be used to start a war against countries in the region.

Al Udeid is the largest… pic.twitter.com/UxJBPJTKMX

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 16, 2024

There are other options.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GaArYLtWwAAA_kh?format=jpg&name=large

#Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met King Abdullah II of #Jordan in Amman to discuss the regional tensions. pic.twitter.com/zMWUTvQKlT

Iran Nuances  (@IranNuances) October 16, 2024

According to @WallaNews, Israel has invested billions in preparations for a potential strike on Iran, developing specialized munitions that the U.S. either lacks or declined to provide. These include long-range missiles launched by fighter jets and advanced bunker busters. The…

Open Source Intel  (@Osint613) October 15, 2024

new shit on-deck

Originally Posted By HIPPO:
The deputy commander of the Training Center of the Special Operations Forces (SOF) of Russia (в/ч 43292), Colonel Nikita Klenkov, was shot dead in his car near Moscow.

According to available information, he returned from the combat zone in Ukraine around a week ago.

The assailant fired eight bullets, Baza reported.

https://t.me/istories_media/7854
https://t.me/bazabazon/32162
https://msk1.ru/text/criminal/2024/10/16/74218670/

The deputy commander of the Training Center of the Special Operations Forces (SOF) of Russia (?/? 43292), Colonel Nikita Klenkov, was shot dead in his car near Moscow.

According to available information, he returned from the combat zone in Ukraine around a week ago.

The… pic.twitter.com/V5JBywGS4q

— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (@Archer83Able) October 16, 2024

was/were; 30 sec video of crime scene and investigators going over it.

Originally Posted By HIPPO:

German opposition leader Merz attacks the appeasement policies of the Scholz government.

"We should not be afraid of Putin, but give him 24 hours to stop the bombing. And if he does not fulfill this demand, we should immediately give Ukraine all the necessary weapons, including… pic.twitter.com/sywoFEJQi4

KyivPost  (@KyivPost) October 16, 2024

German opposition leader Merz attacks the appeasement policies of the Scholz government.

"We should not be afraid of Putin, but give him 24 hours to stop the bombing. And if he does not fulfill this demand, we should immediately give Ukraine all the necessary weapons, including Taurus, and lift all restrictions on their use."

Originally Posted By 4xGM300m:


Merz is a loud-mouth, he wouldn't do anything of what he demands if he was in power instead of Scholz.

Originally Posted By HIPPO:
ja

Originally Posted By HIPPO:
/media/mediaFiles/sharedAlbum/th-463.jpg

"A Houthis anti-ship ballistic missile or other missile arrived at a very shallow trajectory, with minimal warning, without a chance for interception, and splashing down 200 meters from US Navy aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower."https://t.co/mjS8dhBBlT pic.twitter.com/U4EDCGW9TM

— Ryan Chan ??? (@ryankakiuchan) October 16, 2024

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GaBkJELbIAEYVZ8?format=png&name=mediumA Draw Is a Win: The Houthis After One Year of War/media/mediaFiles/sharedAlbum/th-463.jpg
Don’t touch the boats.

Originally Posted By Prime:

Ukrainian warriors intercepting a Russian FPV signal, only to find out the target is their hideout \uD83D\uDE2C
Luckily no one was hurt. pic.twitter.com/Kq5HSLxJgw

— Kvist.P \uD83C\uDDE9\uD83C\uDDF0\uD83C\uDDFA\uD83C\uDDE6 (@kvistp) October 16, 2024

Originally Posted By doc540:
200 meters

@ 218 yds away from one of the biggest, juiciest targets in the known world

an enemy, anti-ship ballistic missile

Is this true or propaganda?

Originally Posted By 4xGM300m:


They should paint them black for a bigger surprise.

Originally Posted By 4xGM300m:
https://preview.redd.it/second-picture-from-the-back-of-the-recently-destroyed-ch2-v0-ldar7wefp5vd1.jpeg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=6ebb0804f6e71daa8ec9589b812c4272c07cdacb

Another angle of the destroyed Challenger 2. Oooof.