Russian officials are asking local residents in one Novosbibirsk community to crowdfund equipment for troops fighting in Ukraine.
Officials in Morskoy used the popular networking sites Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte to plead for donations to buy quadcopters, gas generators, binoculars, compression bandages, and combat application tourniquets used by the U.S. and other NATO countries, according to the Siberian news outlet Taiga.info.
“The goods can be handed over to the administration of Morskoy village on business days,” one posting reportedly read, along with pro-Putin and pro-war hashtags. The appeals were later deleted.
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The equipment on the local officials’ wish list was said to be meant for members of an anti-aircraft missile regiment heading for Ukraine, though it was not clear why the Russian military was not supplying such equipment.
Russian troops already in Ukraine have routinely been caught complaining about military commanders providing them with no equipment or shoddy gear in intercepted phone calls to relatives back home, according to Ukrainian intelligence. Others have reportedly been forced to plead with their mothers to buy them protective equipment.
While some Western experts have said Russia is likely close to depleting its resources several months into the war against Ukraine, the issues with equipment for troops has reportedly plagued them throughout the so-called “special military operation.”
“We have to buy everything ourselves, with our own money. I’m not even talking about modern body armor and helmets: there are no warm clothes, no dry rations or first-aid kits. And all the equipment we are fighting with in Ukraine is in Soviet mothballs, the weapons just jam,” one soldier told The Moscow Times anonymously back in May.
“We ask the command to provide at least some additional protection. They just shrug.”
