Russian troops ill-prepared for war with Ukraine, says ex-Kremlin mercenary
India Today
A former mercenary of the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group claimed that the Russian troops were ill-prepared for war as they had never directly faced a powerful enemy.
The Russian military's failure to seize the Ukrainian capital was inevitable because in the preceding years they had never directly faced a powerful enemy, according to a former mercenary with the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group who fought alongside the Russian army.
Marat Gabidullin took part in Wagner Group missions on the Kremlin's behalf in Syria and in a previous conflict in Ukraine, before deciding to go public about his experience inside the secretive private military company.
He quit the Wagner group in 2019, but several months before Russia launched the invasion on Feb. 24 Gabidullin, 55, said he received a call from a recruiter who invited him to go back to fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine.
He refused, in part because, he said, he knew Russian forces were not up to the job, even though they trumpeted their arsenal of new weapons and their successes in Syria where they helped President Bashar al-Assad defeat an armed rebellion.
"They were caught completely by surprise that the Ukrainian army resisted so fiercely and that they faced the actual army," Gabidullin said about Russia's setbacks in Ukraine.
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He said people he spoke to on the Russian side had told him they expected to face rag-tag militias when they invaded Ukraine, not well-drilled regular troops.
