By Karen von Guttenberg
Hundreds of thousands of them are supposed to go to the front in Ukraine – but hundreds of thousands of Russian reservists cannot be equipped …
The hastily conscripted only get their uniform. If they’re lucky, decent boots too. The guns are often old and rusty. Backpack, sleeping bag, bandages, medication? There is not any.
A video is currently running on many social media channels that shows an apparently experienced soldier instructing the recruits. She stands between the beds of a barrack and gives front tips in quick succession:
“Next to a fire, they’ll get you real quick. What else… definitely sleeping bags! You will sleep where necessary. Sleeping bags and sleeping pads or similar.”
One of the soldiers asks, “Won’t anyone give us this?”
The soldier’s voice becomes more determined: “It all has to come from you guys! You got a uniform, weapons and everything military. Everything else – no, our men equip themselves.”
Ask your girlfriends, wives, mothers for pads
Her next words get really bitter: “It’s the same with medicine. Anti-diarrhoea, loperamide (against diarrhea) and hydrogen peroxide (to clean wounds and wound edges) are essential.
pressure bandages! I don’t have enough pressure bandages for all of you. There are no pressure bandages in pharmacies. Let your relatives get them out of the cars for you. Take them from the first aid boxes in the cars.
Now, men, don’t laugh, ask your girlfriends, wives, mothers for pads. The cheapest sanitary pads plus the cheapest tampons. Do you know what the tampons are for? When you’re shot, you push it in, it swells up and presses against the outside walls (of the wound). Men, I know that from Chechnya. Sanitary pads are essential, the cheap ones. Everything will be of use. (…) You now have all this information. If possible, take a little of everything.”
Finally, her voice actually becomes like a little hug. “Men, please take care of yourselves.”
Apparently nobody else does it…