Paul Goble
Staunton, June 17 – Fragging -- attacks on officers by soldiers under their command and a phenomenon that was notorious in the US military in Vietnam as well as in Soviet forces in Afghanistan as well -- is now taking place in Russian units in Ukraine, data collected by Novaya Gazeta suggest.
The independent paper examined military court records in the occupied territories between February and October 2023. It identified more than 135 cases in which Russian soldiers were charged with killing either civilians or other Russian military personnel (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/06/14/ruzhe-streliaet-po-svoim).
These figures are necessarily incomplete both because of the limited time and territory they covered, the paper acknowledges, and because not all crimes of this type are brought to the courts or correctly categorized. Consequently, the real numbers may be far higher, the paper suggests.
But even these numbers are indicative of breakdowns in command and control and unit cohesion that threaten the ability of the Russian military to carry out its mission, prompting officers to avoid giving orders that might lead to their own deaths at the hands of their own soldiers.
And to the extent that such cases become more widely known, fragging of this kind will certainly prompt discussions among Russians in general and those in the political elite about the potentially dangerous consequences of continuing to pursue the Kremlin’s military goals and could even lead to demands for changes in both tactics and strategy.
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