There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Maggoty ,

That sucks for him, but he could also have used that knowledge, and the warning that command wasn’t going to let him keep doing that, to engineer a defection. On the whole I hope Russian commanders keep being this stupid and corrupt.

slimarev92 ,

Ted Cruz?

werefreeatlast ,

He’s in Cancun at the moment, but if you leave a message… that’s it, that’s the end of the previous sentence.

InvertedParallax ,

An Allegedly Corrupt Russian Commander

Yeah this title was written by the department of redundancy department.

AA5B , (edited )

And we’re all ready to believe that, but the article had nothing to support that claim. An easier explanation is someone’s incompetence that they either didn’t think they needed or didn’t know how to use a drone operator or couldn’t keep him supplied/equipped and the accusations are outrage over that.

Being incompetent or having inadequate supplies are certainly bad things but different from being corrupt

InvertedParallax ,

but different from being corrupt

Yes, but they already mentioned the commander was Russian in the article.

otter ,

An easier explanation is [sic] someone’s incompetence that they either didn’t think… or didn’t know how…

Did you miss the part where they’re clearly posting from the department of redundancy department? 🤪

jballs ,
@jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

The drone operators video in the article explicitly calls out the commander for being corrupt, misreporting the situation on the ground, having Western contacts that he’s working with, and being involved in narco-trafficking.

I feel bad for the drone operator who was sent to his death for a shitty cause, but if the Russian commanders are like that, that’s a win for the good guys in my book.

AA5B ,

I work in an industry known for frequent large layoffs, so I’m making the connection that many former employees take it personally and say things out of spite. I’m not entirely taking the operators word for it, since he clearly has a reason to be pissed off. As I said though: easy to believe

Yeah, it’s tough here because all wars, especially this one, are so horrible. I do feel sorry for those caught up in it and who suffer the consequences, and I know most Russians are not there entirely willingly. Still, Russia is the perpetrator, they are the cause of this suffering, death, and destruction, and this soldier was clearly participating. He is part of the problem so better him than his intended victims

dezmd ,
@dezmd@lemmy.world avatar

What kind of psychopathic logic tree is this? He’s not be laid off, he’s being sent to die.

AA5B , (edited )

Most of us don’t have the experience of being sent off to die.

While I know it’s comparatively trivial, if people can be pissed off enough to make accusations after hearing the bad news of losing their employment, think of how pissed off they might be on hearing life threatening bad news

Maggoty ,

And from a military perspective I’ve seen new commanders make incredibly stupid decisions just to make it look like they’re making a difference. I’ve also seen reporting channels get shut down or restricted to prevent inconvenient facts from going up the chain of command. I can’t really talk about specifics for the second one except to say they weren’t war crimes, they were just inconvenient to their next promotion. And at scale is probably why Biden, Trump, and Obama had an inflated sense of the ANA’s readiness.

But the first one, haha let’s go. In the Infantry drinking is a lifestyle, especially in the early-mid 2000’s when it seemed like you were just existing until the random number generator gave up your number. So the headquarters company gets a new CO. Of note, this guy isn’t the Battalion commander. He’s just the guy responsible for running the company that houses communications, scouts, mortars, etc. We’re not under his command, we’re one of the line companies. He decides his big splash is going to be tackling the alcohol problem. Looking back it really was a problem, but good luck telling us that when we knew we were going to be going back to Iraq at some point and for our sins were considered capable of taking on hard missions. No lazy patrols in a peaceful area for us. So yeah, we drank, and we partied, a lot, and we felt we were entitled to it. This living embodiment of the good idea fairy issues an order banning all alcohol from dorm rooms with headquarters company soldiers staying in them. The problem? The scouts and mortars were some of the hardest partiers and they were largely billeted with roommates from other companies. Reader, you can see where this is going right? But in order to see the entire depth of folly possible we need to keep going.

That Friday, their dear leader orders a surprise inspection of their rooms. This is actually against regulations. Health and welfare checks can be a surprise, but they are supposed to be conducted by neutral NCOs, typically Alpha will do Bravo and vice versa. Otherwise you can only do a surprise inspection with a warrant and MPs. (Believe or not there’s a union of enlisted soldiers that got this stuff written into regs.) Even better, this guy does it during the workday. So we’re not in our rooms. We come back from some training that afternoon to find trashcans all over the barracks filled with our alcohol. And of course they also wanted to write guys up for finding “contraband”. (There’s very little that’s actually contraband stateside in the military, it basically has to be illegal.) It turns out this guy was trying to enforce General Order Number 1, which is a deployed rule saying no porn, no sex, and no alcohol. Applying it to our barracks was not only unprecedented and outside his authority, it was seen as a declaration of war by the E4 mafia. To be fair, we didn’t abide by GO1 overseas either, and the idea of an officer who was going to make it his mission to enforce it, instead of using GO1 to go after guys who went too far was intolerable. He had broken the unspoken contract of ignoring small infractions and hammering the big ones.

So the first thing we did was we lodged a complaint, he had destroyed our personal property and invaded our privacy without authority. We were told it was unfortunate but it wouldn’t happen like that again, there would be a one time amnesty for anything illegal or contraband found, and we were to make sure we paid him his due respect still. Also, we should mark our alcohol clearly so that inspectors knew it was the property of someone in a different company, under different authority. Well you can guess how that went. The guys that didn’t share a room with someone from a line company got space in our fridges. The guys that did labeled an entire shelf as the one for beer from another company. Which I want to stress, was not an uncommon amount of beer for one person to keep on hand. On Monday they pulled a health and welfare check. And wouldn’t you know it there was nothing for them to find. The sergeants knew we were covering for them but as long as we told them it was ours and not owned by someone from headquarters there was nothing they could do. At this point only a few days have passed and the commander for headquarters is angry. He knows we’re working around him. He knows the E4 mafia has started making sure he doesn’t get anything done on time, headquarters company is the last to know about anything, the last to arrive to anything, the last to receive anything, and all of that goes doubly for anything he personally needs. They’ve begun making him look like he’s incompetent. So he ups the ante and orders a 100 percent piss test. Most of his barracks guys comes up dirty, they’ve been drinking and they can’t hide it. Now he’s got half of his company for disobeying GO1. This 900 IQ chad orders them all written up for administrative punishment. That means they could lose rank, pay, free time, or all three. Now this next part is a bit murky but one of two things happens. The Battalion Commander notices this shitfest and relieves him of command. That is the official version. The unofficial version is one of the E4’s with not much to lose signed for a courts martial. If you think your administrative punishment is unjust you can sign a line to turn it into a courts martial, where the punishment possibilities jump up to fun things like jail time. However an investigator from up the chain of command is assigned and everything comes out. More than one soldier has saved themselves punishment by signing that line.

So yeah, the moral of the story is the military has a special place in the annals of bad leadership, because of the complete control leadership exercises over their subordinates.

Clent ,

Narco trafficking sounds like a good incentive to get rid of drone operators. Wouldn’t want them capturing footage of those operations

givesomefucks ,

Obviously, I do t know anything that’s not in the article…

But…

We’re looking at drafted soldiers, and officers that were likely career military before…

There’s a reason why America stopped doing that even if the kids today don’t know where “fraggin” comes from.

In Vietnam, it wasn’t just because they hated their Officer, it was also if their last one got killed legitimately and the new guy was obviously going to get you and your buddies killed. In that environment, it doesn’t matter if your officer is trying to get you killed or is incompetent.

And especially today with all the media and propaganda, it’s hard to say this one was some kind of spy or intentionally causing Russian causalities.

But its just as likely he’s an old school “a soldier is a soldier, stop playing video games” type of guy.

To the troops that can look like intentional sabotage. When troops start thinking their officers will get them killed…

I can’t think of a nation off the top of my head that won a war like that.

The closest would be when the Nazis invaded Russia and any Russians that ran got shot by the Russians behind them.

But that wasn’t their officers. That was the officers and troops behind them that would be doing the same thing in days or even hours.

If Russian troops start thinking the best way to stay alive is kill their officers, we’re gonna start seeing a lot of dead officers, especially with Russia’s reliance on criminals and mercenaries these days.

totallynotaspy ,
@totallynotaspy@fedia.io avatar

I boosted because for the most part I agree, however the 40k style commissar executions by the Soviets was wildly overblown by Hollywood and the joys of the First Cold War (imo, it either never ended or began anew in the past 20 years).

I dug around to find some relevant info:

These barrier troops operated by apprehending retreating troops and sending them back to the frontline. When this was not possible, retreating troops were detained to await trial. Although they had orders which allowed them to shoot deserters and “cowards” on the spot, and while this most certainly did happen, it was not the norm. Of those detained and found guilty (around 900,000), roughly 422,000 were sent to penal battalions where they would continue the fight against the Germans by performing the most dangerous jobs. This number accounted for around 1.5% of those who would serve in the Red Army during World War II. Another 436,000 were imprisoned

An example of these ratios can be found in an internal list from the NKVD regarding the Battle of Stalingrad from 1 August 1942 to 15 October 1942. According to the list, 15,649 soldiers were picked up by barrier troops. Of these, 244 were imprisoned, 278 were shot, 218 were sent to penal units, and 14,833 soldiers were returned to their units.

So these blocking units were technically being operated by NVKD orders and officers, and according to their data, the vast majority of retreating/deserting troops were sent back alive (to die on the front line). Also for context for any readers unaware, the NKVD was the predecessor to the KGB, much like how the US had their OSS more or less turn into the CIA.

Couple quick sources since I'm too lazy to dig through my Russian history textbooks:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/11/05/the-soviet-army-once-shot-its-own-troops-for-retreating--the-russian-army-could-do-the-same/
https://www.thecollector.com/soviets-in-world-war-ii-myths-and-misconceptions/

totallynotaspy ,
@totallynotaspy@fedia.io avatar

Also I feel nothing for more Orcs getting slaughtered, after seeing the article all I could think was "Good, let them keep fucking up."

InvertedParallax ,

Yeah, no, you’re right on here.

No better than they deserve.

The worst enemy of Russia has always been Russia.

InvertedParallax , (edited )

the NKVD was the predecessor to the KGB, much like how the US had their OSS more or less turn into the CIA.

Whoooa-ooaahh!!!

That’s, that’s not even a comparison you can make, that’s insane!

The nkvd was a monstrous organization that controlled every aspect of Soviet civilian life, it was Stalin’s personal enforcement arm, responsible for all the purges and executions.

It was led by this fucker here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria

The hundreds of underaged girls he raped and tortured are literally the least of his crimes.

Comparing the nkvd with the Cia? I don’t even understand how you can try.

The KGB exists because the nkvd was utterly out of control under Stalin and they wanted something a bit less insane. Still a brutal arm of state security, but the NKVD was schizophrenic serial killers on meth.

The US has never, EVER in our history had anything that can remotely compare to either. The Cia specifically operates against foreign targets, there were very few exceptions to that rule.

totallynotaspy ,
@totallynotaspy@fedia.io avatar

That wasn't the point I was making.

InvertedParallax ,

I get it, I just didn’t like the parallel, the NKVD were absolute monsters, nightmares in human form, the CIA has a LOT of faults, but outside of Pinochet and a few things in the 80s, I can’t see them on the same level at all.

Hubi OP ,
@Hubi@feddit.org avatar

If Russian troops start thinking the best way to stay alive is kill their officers, we’re gonna start seeing a lot of dead officers, especially with Russia’s reliance on criminals and mercenaries these days.

I wouldn’t get my hopes up. These guys knew that they were being sent to their deaths and they still obeyed the order. The Russian mindset is hard to comprehend.

totallynotaspy ,
@totallynotaspy@fedia.io avatar

I've got the Russian male mindset for you," Where is woman, she needs to be back in house on knees, giving me my blyatnaya vodka. Let me hit her to hurry her up."

At least actual orcs are less of monsters....

InvertedParallax , (edited )

Actual orcs never passed a law making domestic abuse legal: en.m.wikipedia.org/…/Domestic_violence_in_Russia

They’re not even animals at this point.

Diplomjodler3 ,

True. These guys know exactly what’s going on but there seems to be little to no resistance. Really strange.

givesomefucks ,

They’d rather go and likely die than live in Russian gulags…

But they’d rather fuck off and be free than either.

It hasn’t even been a year since Russian troops marched to Moscow bruh.

They’re not as solid as you think. It took a leader to get them to march on Moscow, all it takes for them to fuck off is seeing others do it. And if officers stop them, well, there’s lots of people in the Russian army that won’t hesitate to kill someone for their own gain.

MediaBiasFactChecker Bot ,

Forbes - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Forbes:
> MBFC: Right-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Mostly Factual - United States of America
> Wikipedia about this source

Search topics on Ground.Newshttps://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/09/13/an-allegedly-corrupt-russian-commander-sent-his-best-drone-operator-to-die-as-an-infantryman/

Media Bias Fact Check | bot support

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •