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The Guildhall news agency in Ukraine received personal statements written by soldiers and officers who reportedly belong to the 41st Combined Arms Army that deployed to Ukraine in full at the start of the invasion. The provided photos of the statements mention reasons for the soldiers' reluctance to participate in the war, including an unwillingness to be used as "cannon fodder," commanders’ failure to explain the reasons for the military operation in Ukraine, scarcity of technical means, and ammunition, communications failure within the chain of military command, and many others. Sergeant Sapar M. Mirapov wrote in his personal statement to the commander of the Military Unit #61899:“… I hereby report that I consider it impossible to re-deploy due to the unit’s poor organization, lack of communications and technical means. [On my original tour], I arrived without understanding why I was needed there, without any explanations of the task. I don’t want to be ‘cannon fodder.’”
Military Unit #61899 is a shorthand for the 27th Separate Guards Sevastopol Red Banner Motor Rifle Brigade, which has participated in the following engagements since the collapse of the Soviet Union: the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, the First Chechen War, the Second Chechen War, and the Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war.
“… refuses to participate again in the military hostilities in Ukraine due to the lack of logistical support, absence of coordination of actions, absence of any communication within the unit and with the command.”
“… from the very beginning we were faced with [the command's] deception and concealment of the true goals and tasks of the military deployment. Incomprehensible ‘military exercise tasks’ meant a dramatically different thing … After our crossing the border into Ukraine, we completely discredited ourselves in the eyes of both the world and the Slavic community. From that moment on, our actions and nature were of an occupation army, which was clearly expressed by the reaction of the civilian population."Below are photocopies of other personal statements of the soldiers of the Russian military.
A page from Lieutenant Yegorov’s personal statement to his unit commander stating his refusal for a second combat deployment to Ukraine.
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