Propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, on the air of the Solovyov Live channel, addressed the mobilized, dissatisfied conditions and lack of preparation.
“And you will talk about yourself: your commander is not the same, and you were not trained that way. And how did you prepare yourself? And what did you do at the training ground to be ready for battle? Solovyov said.
Then Solovyov advised the mobilized to think about their own duty to their homeland, and not blame the state for problems with uniforms and command.
“Do you think that everyone owes you? What do you owe the state? What do you owe your country? We never asked these questions. Let's just say, 30 years of modern Russia, these same questions could not be asked.
The mobilized and their relatives from different regions have repeatedly complained that they are not given uniforms and do not conduct any preparation for battle.
On October 25, mobilized from Bashkortostan recorded a video message to officials, where they complained about the “very meager” conditions in which they were left by the command: without water and food. After that, the men were sent to the front without preparation, the wives of three of them told about this. They did not undergo any training, "weapons were handed out to them for demonstration to the leadership, and then they were immediately taken back."
Mobilized from the Oryol region recorded a video message to the governor, in which they talked about torn backpacks, “wooden” berets, rubber boots, blunt knives, with which, “if you want to cut yourself, you won’t cut yourself.” “Complete shit. Chinese lanterns from FixPrice that do not burn, bowlers that break immediately. <…> What they write in the articles is that “the Oryol guys are happy” … Yes, no one here is happy!” – conscripts say and ask where the 33 million rubles, which were allegedly allocated for the mobilized, have gone.
The head of the Oryol region, Andrei Klychkov, in response to complaints from those mobilized about the poor quality of uniforms, recommended that they buy everything themselves, “if someone doesn’t like something.”
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.