Videos that appear to show Russian forces surrendering to Ukrainian troops on Russian soil suggest that those soldiers are desperate and inexperienced, warfare experts said.
The Washington Post reviewed more than 130 photos and videos taken since Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Russia’s Kursk region began on August 6th.
Russia was slow to react to the Ukraine invasion, allowing several days to pass before it diverted enough troops to slow the incursion. Its leaders were said to have ignored intelligence of a Ukrainian military build-up on the border.
Dara Massicot, a Russian military expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the publication: “My instinct upon seeing those videos was that those soldiers were not combat-experienced troops who have been fighting inside Ukraine.”
Most of the videos seen by the Post appeared to have been filmed by Ukrainian soldiers and then shared by social media, the outlet said. Business Insider could not independently verify the footage.
Massicot told the Post: “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a video of Russian soldiers surrendering en masse like that.”
The Post said that visuals it verified showed that Ukraine had captured at least 247 Russian soldiers in the region. For comparison, before the Kursk invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine was holding 1,348 Russian soldiers.
Mathieu Boulègue, another Russian military expert, told the Post that the apparent number of surrendering Russian troops was surprisingly high: “I was not expecting so many easy surrenders.”
“But it also shows how fragile the war narrative is in Russia, and it also shows how desperate probably these soldiers are who would much rather be with Ukraine in Ukrainian prisons or cells than fighting for Russia,” Boulègue, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said.
Ukraine said it captured 102 soldiers in one day, in what would be the largest single group it had captured since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Officials also told the Financial Times that the total number of captured Russian soldiers was in the “hundreds.”
A Ukrainian deputy commander who was involved in the incursion previously told the BBC that the soldiers guarding Russia’s borders “were mainly kids doing their mandatory service.”
Western intelligence, defense analysts, Ukrainian soldiers, and captured Russian troops have also pointed to Russian soldiers being poorly trained.
Rainer Saks, an Estonian security expert, told ERR that the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk had been successful “mainly due to the fact that the Russian military command and political leadership were completely unprepared for this kind of event.”
Some of the troops in the videos analyzed by The Post said they were conscripts. Putin had promised that these soldiers would not be involved in combat.
Ukraine says that it has taken more than 483 square miles of Russian territory — which is more than the amount of territory Russia has captured in Ukraine since the start of the year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s aim with the incursion is to create a “buffer zone” that can minimize Russia’s ability to attack Ukraine.
Warfare analysts also told BI that Ukraine likely additionally wanted to stretch Russia’s forces and give fresh motivation to its troops and allies.
