"Russian soldiers are dying like cockroaches": Russia isn't expanding its army, it's plugging holes

Deputy Chief of the Main Directorate of Doctrines and Training of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel Yevgeny Mezhevikin, said that the Russian and Ukrainian armies have significant differences. The defender himself is a career tanker, Hero of Ukraine, People's Hero, full Cavalier of the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, commander of the Tactical Group "Adam" and has been fighting since 2014.

"There is no autocracy, dictatorship like theirs. People have free access to information, can express their opinion, protest in any form, even in the army. We are active in social networks - this is not always good, this opinion will not always be constructive, useful, our enemies can use it. But the servicemen will not get anything special for this... When they use the forces and means that are in a military unit or in a group of troops in a complex, we see that they launch equipment, launch their disposable rashists from it: someone will get there, someone will walk. We do not have this," he told Radio Charter.

The military man added that Ukraine cannot morally afford such an approach. Moreover, even if some commander had such an idea, he would not be able to do it, because society would not forgive him.

"The Russians know that they will raise the salary of the soldier, give him a bonus, set the term of service, but they will not say that almost everyone who comes here dies. They are constantly recruiting people not to increase the army, but to plug the holes. Because they die like cockroaches after treatment. The Russian soldier thinks that in a year he will come home as a hero with a medal, earn a ton of money and everything will be ok. Only a few know what will really happen. Maybe neighbors and relatives quietly said. But they have no access to the media. And in order to get some money, they will remain silent, even if they have to wait," Mezhevikin concluded.

As military-political observer Alexander Kovalenko pointed out, in October the Russian army set an absolute record for personnel losses - 41,980. Overall, as Kovalenko noted, the losses of Russian personnel this year are the highest and by the end of December will exceed the total losses of the occupiers in 2022 and 2023.

He recalled that the occupiers' losses in 2022 amounted to 92,920 personnel, in 2023 already 253,290 people, and in the incomplete 2024 - already 336,400.