Russian soldiers are facing a new foe amid the country’s continued invasion of Ukraine, with reports surfacing that inadequate equipment and clothing have led some soldiers to die of hypothermia.
“This is what happens when a fashion designer, like Valentin Yudashkin, develops Russia’s military uniform,” Rebekah Koffler, a former DIA intelligence officer and author of “Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat,” told Fox News Digital. America”. .
Koffler’s comments come after reports surfaced on Sunday indicating that Russian forces have had problems battling the cold temperatures with equipment and clothing unsuitable for winter combat.
“For Russian troops, there is now quite significant evidence of ill-equipped, especially recruits arriving… even in training camps, dying of hypothermia,” security expert Robert Fox said during an interview during the weekend, according to the UK. Daily express newspaper. “This is really something. Inadequate sleeping bags, inadequate clothing and suffering from the cold. They find it hard to fight in the cold but the fighting goes on.”
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A Russian soldier stands guard at the Luhansk Power Plant in the town of Shchastya.
(Photo by ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images)
The fight against the cold couldn’t come at a worse time for Russian troops, who have faced fierce resistance and multiple counter-offensives by Ukrainian forces that have stalled the country’s progress.
According to Koffler, the problem facing Russia now can be traced back to the military’s transition from the Soviet era, pointing out that Yudashkin was actually a designer for former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa Gorbacheva.
“Russian soldiers dying of hyperthermia in the winter is nothing new,” Koffler said. “Unlike Soviet Army uniforms designed for harsh Russian winters, modern Russian military uniform is not optimized for freezing temperatures.”
Instead, the 1994 rebranding of the Russian military caused “dismay” among the troops, with designs that “prioritized style and low cost over pragmatism and functionality”.
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The Russian Army.
(Photo by Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“Instead of using natural fabrics such as cotton, linen and heavy, coarse wool, synthetic materials were used, which kept the soldiers cold in the winter and warm in the summer,” Koffler said. “The bulky, baggy style has been replaced with tight-fitting styles. Traditional Russian felt footwear, valenki, which has been worn by military and civilians for hundreds of years, has been banned by the post-Soviet military leadership.”
Winter conditions could also hamper Russia’s ability to use drones that the country’s military recently purchased from Iran, with The Express reporting on Monday that Russia has stopped deploying the Iranian-built Shahed-136 drone in Ukraine because the parts are inadequate to operate in winter temperatures.
“I think it is decreasing, because all the planes, which are drones, are made of plastics and materials sensitive to frost and weather conditions,” Yevgeny Silkin, spokesman for the Joint Command for Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, they told the outlet.
Silkin said the drones, which have been used near population centers and have claimed heavy casualties in recent months, had not been detected for nearly a month.
Firefighters work after a drone attack on buildings in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 17, 2022.
(AP Photo/Roman Hrytsyna, Files)
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However, Koffler was skeptical of the idea that drones wouldn’t work in the winter, arguing that they are made “almost exclusively” from Western parts and should be designed to operate regardless of the weather.
“Even if these drones aren’t optimized for freezing temperatures, they could still cause injury and death when targeting populated areas, which is what the Russians are doing,” Koffler said. “Russian warfare combat strategy emphasizes psychological pressure on civilians, in order to get them to put pressure on the Ukrainian leadership to stop the suffering inflicted on them by Russian forces.”
