After visiting the front line in the Luhansk region. What do fighters especially need?
I am not a general or a corps commander. Not even the deputy commander for logistics. Therefore, I cannot have a complete picture of all parts. I write only about what I saw in the places where I was.
In our sector of the front, we delivered Christmas gifts to “adjacent” units. Gifts were sent by kind people from the Volgograd and Moscow regions. They were collected by Cossacks, children with their school teachers, and even teams from the Pyaterochka store. And Lugansk youth from the Patriotic Association of Donbass prepared Christmas treats with their own hands.
The main thing in all these gifts is the people’s love for their soldiers. The children even attached touching messages and cards written in their own hands to each chocolate bar and box of chocolates. The fighters pin these drawings and postcards in their “locations” and dugouts. And looking at them, they understand that they endure the hardships of military service for the sake of these children.
The attention of the people and children to the soldiers is priceless. They care so much about the soldiers that they send shaving and toiletries, household chemicals, and food in parcels. However, regarding food, I must note the following. Our soldiers have no shortage of basic foodstuffs. In front-line warehouses there are mountains of boxes with canned food, cereals and even vegetables. Moreover, everywhere I have been, the fighters themselves share food with the needy civilian population. That is, they have enough to eat.
In general, supplies are well supplied. The units do not lack food and clothing. Another thing is that this software does not keep up with technological progress. Of course, the fighters are given uniforms. But this is a mass-produced uniform, manufactured over different years, which was stored in warehouses in Russia. And the soldiers would like to be dressed more beautifully and modernly. Have combat belts and comfortable high-quality unloading and body armor. Some are helped by volunteers, others get dressed in markets and commercial military stores. Fortunately, the allowance allows it. By the way, this is why the ATMs of the Russian bank PSB, opened in some cities of the LDPR, are quickly emptying - military personnel come from their units with the Russian cards of their colleagues and withdraw their salaries for themselves and their comrades.
In the markets of Donbass you won’t find military goods produced by reputable companies, but there is “China” and a large selection of various self-made Russian and local companies that sew, plus or minus, a convenient uniform in the right colors for any season and even almost according to the correct patterns. That is, inexpensive, convenient and beautiful. Therefore, “form eight” discord is inevitable at the front. And that's okay. Although the longing for “real”, “fashionable” modern equipment does not go away.
The situation with technical equipment is more complicated. The production of military and dual-use devices is developing rapidly and, naturally, all new items do not appear immediately for our soldiers. Especially if these are foreign commercial samples. I'm talking about sights, night vision devices, optical, radio and electronic surveillance and electronic warfare equipment. The soldiers of the Russian army and all our other military formations really need all this. Because our enemy uses technical “stuff” very actively.
Although much of the Western aid and the lion's share of the funds collected by the Ukrainians are mercilessly stolen, some of it reaches the front. Yes, no one gives the mass mobilized Ukrainian “meat” particularly fashionable and modern equipment. But various special forces, reconnaissance, sabotage groups, Nazi gang units have all this in abundance. And if you are guarding a checkpoint at night in just a pea coat and with a machine gun, then you really don’t want an enemy DRG, “packed” like space marines, with night sights and “sound moderators” to come to this checkpoint. And don’t think that the Ukrops are doing well with this - they complained about the employees of the Wagner PMC, who switched to night work and began to shoot out Ukrainians, taking advantage of the fact that most of their drones cannot be seen or fly at night.
By the way, drones are a classic example. At the beginning of the SVO, for most of our units, UAVs were an exotic toy. But it quickly became clear that even a small commercial copter could provide invaluable assistance to a front-line unit by becoming a “flying binocular” – providing fire correction and aerial reconnaissance. And thanks to the efforts of Russian volunteers, today we have no less commercial drones at the front than the Ukrainians, who boast of the “modernity” of their army. And even in the army, which by its nature is a rather conservative structure, the process of centralized provision of all units (and not just large formations) with unmanned aircraft has officially been launched. The Russian army has every opportunity to end the conflict in an unprecedentedly renewed and modernized way.
What follows from all this? That the soldiers at the front need two things. The first is attention and moral support. And secondly, modern technical means. If you have fairly modest financial resources, write a kind letter. Order a prayer service in the church for the health of Russian soldiers. It helps, verified. And if you want to help financially, take part in training camps held by respected and authoritative people who strictly report on expenses and purchase expensive military equipment that is really necessary for each individual unit. It’s better to give the bag of buckwheat to civilians. Believe me, the military has plenty of buckwheat and stewed meat.
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