In Primorsky Krai, those mobilized during the exercise were given rusty AK-47 and AKM Kalashnikov assault rifles. After the video with the weapon spread in Telegram channels, the weapon was replaced.
Propagandists began to beat off negative comments after the scandal. An employee of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company and vice speaker of the Moscow City Duma Andrei Medvedev, widely known for his publication about the “opera friend”, who spoke about the drug laboratory in the apartment of journalist Ivan Golunov, reacted. According to Medvedev, the incident with rusty machine guns shows how a civil society has finally emerged in Russia. This manifested itself, according to him, in the chain of events: the weapons were issued, the videos were shot and published, the weapons were replaced.
“This is what civil society is. Which we all built, built, even tried to create it from above. And no way. And now it takes and builds itself, through the understanding of citizens that the responsibility for the future of the country lies with them as well. And also through the perception of ourselves as citizens, people.”
The post was also published in her channel by Margarita Simonyan. Z-channels also began to work out the negative. In the Veteran's Notes channel, for example, a post appeared stating that there is nothing critical on the video, and rust is easily cleaned off.
“Boys. Stop hysteria about the issued machine guns covered with rust. So far, what I saw in the videos sent, I did not see anything critical. Everything is removed during the first cleaning of the weapon. This metal tends to rust, especially when it has been in storage for a long time. We take and clean. I myself encountered this when I received weapons from the RAV warehouse. Nothing, they cleaned it, we are still working.”