Tables Turned, Russian Troops Complain of Famine – Russian Milblogger

Pro-Kremlin miblogger Yegor Gusenko, known as “Thirteenth,” posted videos online Monday complaining that Russia’s ability to conduct combat operations in many areas of the battlefield is being limited by a lack of artillery ammunition.

According to Gutsenko, this is a recent phenomenon caused by the destruction of ammunition depots by Ukrainian drone strikes in Toropets in the Tver region and Tikhoretsk. In mid-September in the Krasnodar Territory and said the attacks would continue.

He claimed that the problem particularly affected those areas of the front where “active offensive operations” were taking place.

“The 98th Airborne Division has this problem, as do a number of other units. I won’t name them because there are too many,” he said.

He added that the problem was getting worse and rationing of artillery shells was being imposed on some units.

He complained that Russian troops were still forced to attack Ukrainian positions without artillery support. He further suggested that there was something “criminal” going on among the Russian commanders. Echoing the complaints of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former chairman of the Wagner PMC in May last year, Gutsenko said:

“But even if this happened and some of the warehouses were destroyed, it does not mean that our factories suddenly shut down. The factories work every day – day and night. This ammo is going somewhere.” The Milblogger then asked, “Where is this ammo going?” Why is there so little of it for the troops?”

According to Estonian intelligence, the attack by Ukrainian forces on the Toropets depot on September 18 could have destroyed up to two months’ worth of Russian artillery ammunition, as well as Iskander and Tochka-U, 122mm rockets and aerial bombs.

In early September, Gutsenko released a series of now-deleted videos in which he sharply criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin, his government and military commanders.

In it, he said Putin was a coward for starting his special military operation in 2014, and if he had done so, the war would have been over long ago.

“If 10 years ago an old man hadn’t shit himself and taken the honest route [declaring war] “In 2014, all this crap wouldn’t have happened and so many people wouldn’t have died,” he said.

Gutsenko said Russia had been “captured by traitors sitting in the Kremlin.” He said Moscow was putting “inconvenient” citizens like Igor Girkin (Strelkov), a former commander of separatist formations in Donbass, behind bars after he was convicted of “extremism.”