What was meant to be a lightning war in Ukraine is dragging on. And discontent among Russian troops is growing, with serious consequences for the conflict. What was meant to be a lightning war in Ukraine is dragging on. And discontent among Russian troops is growing, with serious consequences for the conflict.
After nine days of a war that was meant to be swift but is instead dragging on, one of the topics that is beginning to be discussed is the morale of Russian troops. Several videos shared by Ukrainian authorities and citizens show captured soldiers admitting they only want to go home, while hundreds of abandoned Russian military vehicles are found along the country's roads despite not having been struck by Kyiv's forces.
While all of this may have reasons of a military and propagandistic nature, a growing number of analysts from around the world are convinced that an increasing share of Moscow's troops are exactly where they do not want to be, owing to internal inequalities and poor preparation for the conflict. This is a factor that may have contributed to making these first days of the attack on Ukraine less effective, and that could have increasingly decisive consequences for the outcome of the conflict.
"We were deceived." The essence of what many members of the Russian troops in Ukraine are experiencing is offered by a soldier captured by Kyiv's forces, when they ask him to explain his presence on the ground. "Everything we were told was a lie. I would tell my boys to leave Ukrainian territory. We have families and children. I think 90 per cent of us would agree to go home."
Taken individually, these statements would carry no statistical weight, not least because they were made in a particular context — that of captivity — and could have been extracted under threat. Yet in reality hundreds of similar videos are circulating, and they increasingly give the impression of a significant gap between the proclamations of Russian president Vladimir Putin and what the operational arm of the invasion of Ukraine actually thinks. From what emerges from the soldiers' own statements, as well as from material gathered by Western intelligence agencies and various other documentation, Moscow's operation was meant to be a quick one, a matter of days. Yet after more than a week of raids and fighting, the conquest of Ukraine envisaged by the Russian president remains a distant prospect, and troops control only a handful of cities and territories between the north-east and the south of the country.
To this must be added the number of troops killed. Kyiv speaks of as many as over 9,000 Russians dead, while Moscow made no statements for several days until, on 2 March, it admitted the loss of 498 fighters — a figure that is certainly an underestimate for propaganda reasons, yet one that already appears high for what had been billed as a painless operation. The desolate expanses of Ukraine are also strewn with military vehicles in perfect condition but abandoned, a sign that many of Russia's logistical losses occurred not through destruction but more likely through flight.
According to an analysis by the Washington Post, first and foremost among Russian troops there is a serious problem of inequality. One in three soldiers involved in the aggression in Ukraine is a conscript, meaning they find themselves in a condition of precarious employment, underpaid and with no prospects for the future, despite being at the front performing the same duties as comrades on far better contracts. This creates internal tensions, fuels fear and erodes motivation and willpower, while also translating into operational difficulties: conscripts often have a lower level of military training, which makes it harder to carry out complex military operations and leads to a preference for simpler ones — which are also more predictable.
On top of this, the way in which Vladimir Putin had presented the mission came up against a decidedly different reality. Russian soldiers, often young men under 20 years old, believed they would arrive in Ukraine and be welcomed as heroes, liberators of the nation from rulers with no popular support whatsoever. On the ground the exact opposite occurred, as the population rose up against the advance of the troops, blocking roads and physically placing themselves in front of tanks to stop them moving forward, while many captured Russian soldiers were treated by Ukrainian civilians with respect and compassion – the scene of a soldier being given food and allowed to make a video call to his mother is emblematic in this regard.
Finally, there is the overarching issue of how long the military operation has lasted. Kyiv's forces had been described and imagined as weak and hopeless; the widespread notion among Russian soldiers was that they would cross the border and advance unimpeded, wrapping things up within a matter of hours. Instead, things proved far more complicated from the very beginning, many soldiers watched their comrades die, and the fierce Ukrainian military resistance may have discouraged Moscow's younger and more precarious fighters. Added to this are the logistical difficulties on the ground: amid frost and snow, many soldiers began to report shortages of food and other basic necessities, since the supplies proved inadequate precisely because of the expectation of a lightning war.
This situation of low morale and despondency among Russian soldiers, which appears to be increasingly widespread, could nonetheless be temporary. Should the situation on the ground change and Moscow's troops actually begin to achieve the superiority and dominance over the territory that Putin envisaged, the various frictions would probably ease. But until that happens, the low morale of the Kremlin's battalions could have serious consequences for the continuation of the conflict.
The Washington Post analysis points out that, faced with poorly motivated soldiers, commanders might demand a more indiscriminate use of force from them, setting aside less brutal and more sophisticated methods of attack. It would be civilians who pay the price, with their protection diminishing ever further, as is indeed already happening in some parts of the country. In recent hours, Serhiy Chernov, president of the Kharkiv regional council, said that Russian attacks in the area in recent hours had caused at least 2,000 deaths, of whom around 100 were children.
The presence of large swathes of a poorly motivated army could then lead to ever-greater reliance by the military top brass on support militias in the field, not directly linked to the army and characterised by very brutal modus operandi. This is the case, for example, of the Chechens mobilised by Ramzan Kadyrov, a figure known for having subjected dissidents and minorities to torture over the years. Finally, faced with frightened or underperforming soldiers, there is the risk of an increase in <
