Ukraine’s unexpected cross-border offensive into Russia’s Kursk region that began on Aug. 6 caught Moscow’s force on the back foot with its speed. As many of Putin’s raw troops withdrew in disarray, if not in panic, many of them still had time to plunder the homes of the 120,000 or so villagers who evacuated ahead of the advance.
In a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) a group of Russian soldiers are seen cursing as they search through a home somewhere in the Kursk region. The family’s possessions scattered on the floor bear witness to the fact that it has already been ransacked, allegedly by a unit from “The Ministry of Defense.”
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Images posted on a Russian social media site show a supermarket that had also been ransacked, with the blogger saying that “the desertion of villages and towns has become a catalyst for rampant looting.”
Looting and lack of military discipline had been a feature of the Russian rank and file in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Accounts of military vehicles being loaded with the possessions of Ukrainians in occupied villages and towns were too numerous to count. Anything that was not screwed down, and much that was, was taken.
Videos posted on YouTube and other social media platforms in the early days of the February 2022 full-scale invasion showed Russian troops blatantly ransacking supermarkets for food and even robbing banks, as captured on this post from March 2, 2022 in the town of Verkhny Rohachyk in the Kherson region:
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Kyiv Post reported from the liberated town of Kupyansk, which for months served as the headquarters for Russia’s civil-military administration, on the extent of the looting. Homes were relieved of nearly every stick of furniture, televisions, washing machines, radiators, bathtubs, and even toilets. Local farms lost their agricultural machinery and livestock, much of it eaten by poorly rationed troops.
Russian soldiers had been witnessed at a parcel delivery service in the border town of Mazyr sending dozens of packages of plunder, some weighing as much as 450 kilograms (990 pounds), back to Russia.
A week into the incursion Ukraine is now said to have penetrated 30 kilometers (19 miles) into the Kursk region and is in control of an area of around 1,000 square kilometers (385 square miles) and almost 30 settlements, many of which are deserted apart from destroyed Russian vehicles and dead soldiers.
Confirming the successful offensive, Ukraine’s military commander General Oleksandr Syrsky said: “The troops are fulfilling their tasks. Fighting continues actually along the entire front line. The situation is under our control."
A lack of military discipline is also evident in the conduct of Russian forces over the last few days. The destruction of a convoy by a missile attack near the village of Oktyabrskoye in the Rylsky district on Friday – just one of many military columns simply parked at the side of the road on its way to the combat zone – is an exemplar of poor military judgement.
Another Russian military column was attacked and destroyed near the village of Krivitskie Budy, Belovsky district some 30 kilometers (19 miles) away from the Ukrainian occupied areas on Monday. This was, however, the result of a friendly fire incident. A Russian Ka-52M attack helicopter opened fire on its own military columns in a case of mistaken identity, destroying military equipment including a 152mm self-propelled 2S19 Msta-S howitzer, which Ukraine does not possess.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation on Monday, still referring to the Ukrainian offensive as a “major terrorist provocation,” and saying “The main task is, of course, for the defense ministry to dislodge the enemy from our territories.”
He said that for Kyiv “the obvious goal [was one] of sowing discord, strife, intimidating [our] people, destroying the unity and cohesion of Russian society.”
The behavior of Putin’s own troops appears to be achieving that aim rather effectively.
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