Ukrainian troops load 155-millimeter M777 howitzer artillery in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on Sunday, May 22, 2022 (Ivor Priket / New York Times)
Natalia Abieva is a real estate agent specializing in renting apartments in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow. But lately she has been learning a lot about battlefield medicine.
She found that packets of hemostatic granules could stop catastrophic bleeding; decompression needles can relieve pressure in a punctured chest. At a military hospital, a wounded commander told her that a comrade had died in his arms because there were no airway tubes available to allow him to breathe.
Abieva, 37, has decided to take matters into her own hands. On Wednesday, she and two friends took a minibus to the Ukrainian border for the seventh time since the start of the war in February, carrying onions, potatoes, two-way radios, binoculars, first aid equipment and even a mobile dental kit. Since the start of the war, she said, she has raised more than $ 60,000 to buy food, clothing and equipment for Russian soldiers serving in Ukraine.
Sign up for The Morning Newsletter
“The whole world, I think, supports our great enemies,” Abieva said. We also want to offer our support, to say, “Guys, we are with you.”
Across Russia, mass movements led largely by women have sprung up to help Russian soldiers. They are evidence of some public support for President Vladimir Putin’s military efforts, but also of growing recognition among Russians that their military, praised before the invasion as a world-class military force, has proved terribly ill-prepared for a major conflict.
The aid often includes sweets and inspirational messages, but goes far beyond the care packages familiar to Americans from the Iraq war. The most sought-after items include imported drones and night-vision telescopes, a sign that Russia’s $ 66 billion defense budget has failed to produce basic equipment for modern warfare.
“No one expected such a war,” said Tatiana Plotnikova, a business owner in Novokuybyshevsk on the Volga River. “I do not think anyone was ready for that.
The story continues
Plotnikova, 47, has already traveled 1,000 miles to the Ukrainian border twice, carrying a total of three tonnes of aid, she said. Last week, she published a new list of urgently needed items on her VKontakte page, a Russian social network: bandages, anesthetics, antibiotics, crutches and wheelchairs.
Medical equipment is in high demand due in part to the growing firepower of the Ukrainian military, as the West is increasingly strengthening it with powerful weapons. Alexander Borodai, a separatist commander and member of the Russian parliament, said materials for the treatment of shrapnel wounds and burns were needed “in large quantities” on the Russian side of the front. More than 90% of Russian injuries in some areas, he said, were recently caused by artillery fire.
Borodai said his units had noticed the use of 155-mm shells fired by American howitzers, and that Russia’s leadership may have underestimated the West’s determination to support Ukraine.
“This does not make the military operation faster from our point of view – it complicates our situation, I do not deny it,” Borodai said, referring to the supply of Western weapons. “It is possible that our military leaders were not ready for such massive support from the West.
The Ukrainian military, which is benefiting from Western support for its cause, is benefiting from a much broader group funding campaign that provides millions of dollars in donations of items such as drones, night vision goggles, rifles and consumer technology.
Most of the groups that collect donations for Russian soldiers seem to work independently of the Russian government. They rely mainly on the personal contacts of the volunteers in the individual units and in the military hospitals, which provide lists of the most necessary.
These groups are rarely mentioned in the Russian state media, perhaps because they undermine the message that the Kremlin is holding on to the war. But sometimes the message filters to the Russian audience.
“Our military continues to say they have everything they need,” a television segment of such volunteers explained in April, “but the mother’s heart has its own will.”
Outside the state media, however, supporters of the war cite private donations as the key to victory. Pro-Russian military bloggers, some of whom are in the Russian military, are urging their followers to donate money to buy night-vision equipment and basic drones.
“Our boys are dying because they lack this equipment,” one blogger wrote, as “the whole West supplies the Ukrainian country.”
The necessary equipment, mainly imported, can be purchased in Russian sporting goods stores or ordered online. Starshe Eddy, a popular military blogger, writes that consumer drones manufactured by the Chinese giant DJI have “become so entrenched in combat operations that it has become difficult to imagine a war without them.”
Abieva, a real estate agent, showed in his Telegram account a Nikon Prostaff 1000 rangefinder equipped with a laser, which he bought for $ 400. Nikon says the element “makes it a reality to see – and reach – deer up to 600 yards.”
“With this kind of technology, everything is going better and faster, wouldn’t you say?” Abieva wrote, adding winking emojis and emojis with a heart.
Abieva said she began seeking help after her husband, a captain, was sent to Ukraine and felt “powerless” to influence the course of events. She visited the hospital at her husband’s local military base and received contact information for surgeons sent to the war. Since then, they have sent requests directly to her and passed on her contacts to colleagues.
When a surgeon at a field hospital requested arterial embolectomy catheters to treat clogged arteries, Abieva found another volunteer in St. Petersburg, Russia, to travel 700 miles to deliver 10 of them immediately. Abieva said that when she met with the surgeon during her own trip to the region a week later, he told her that six of the catheters had already been used.
“We may have saved six lives,” she said.
Apparently, the urgent need of the Russian military for basic medical equipment and basic consumer devices manufactured abroad has led some Russians to wonder how the Kremlin spends its huge military budget, more than 3% of the country’s total economic output. On the VKontakte page of Jana Slobozhan, coordinator of donations in the border town of Belgorod, a woman wrote that the talks to raise money for drones and targets “make me think that the army is completely abandoned to the mercy of fate.”
“Let’s make sure we don’t at least abandon our boys,” Slobozhan wrote. She did not respond to requests for comment.
Putin visited a military hospital on Wednesday for the first time since the start of the war. He later told officials that while the doctors he met assured him that “they have everything they need”, the government must “respond promptly, quickly and effectively to all needs” in military medicine.
Yet the notion that Russian troops in Ukraine are under-equipped is increasingly permeating Russian public discourse – among opponents and supporters of the war. In a documentary about the mothers of soldiers released last weekend by Russian journalist Katerina Gordeeva, viewed about 3 million times on YouTube, a woman describes her son using wire to reattach the soles of his boots.
The Association of Retired Russian Officers published an open letter on May 19, noting that the public is raising funds for equipment that the military is sorely lacking, “even though the government has a lot of money.” The letter embittered Putin’s military efforts as half-hearted, calling on him to declare a state of war in order to take over all of Ukraine.
But on the spot, the fears are more prosaic. As summer approached, the Lyme disease ticks disappeared, and volunteers in Belgorod made a homemade insect repellent, put it in spray bottles and deliver it to the front.
A group of women collecting donations in the area have learned that some of the Russian-backed separatist forces are so ill-equipped that they use shopping bags to carry their belongings. In its Telegram account with about 1,000 followers, the group issued an emergency invitation for backpacks, along with shoes, Q-tips, socks, headlights, lighters, hats, sugar and batteries.
“This is to let them know that they are not alone,” said one of the group’s coordinators in Belgorod, 26-year-old Vera Kusenko, who works at a beauty salon as an eyelash extension specialist. “We hope this will end soon.”
© 2022 The New York Times Company
Add Comment