Military expert on Putin's brutality against troops: "Want to be feared like Stalin and Hitler"
Created: 04/15/2022, 13:07
By: Magdalena von Zumbusch
President of Russia Vladimir Putin at the Victory Day military parade in Red Square on May 9, 2021. © Alexei Nikolsky/ITAR-TASS/Imago
What the Russian army has in common with the Red Army in the Ukraine war - and why Putin reminds him of Stalin: British historian and military expert Beevor reports.
In an interview with
Der Spiegel
, historian Beevor reports on Russia's army and Vladimir Putin's military strategy.
When asked about the current state of the Russian army, he gave a clear verdict: With the exception of the Spetsnaz units (a special unit of the Russian military intelligence service GRU) and the paratroop units, the army was "not professional" because it was mainly based on conscripts *.
The conscripts are also often in poor mental health under the extremely tough leadership.
Putin has invested a lot of money in the armed forces, especially in the last decade, but often without results.
A new battlefield communication system called "Era" does not work, so the Russian commanders have to use simple mobile phones to communicate.
The other side has already benefited from these weaknesses in communication.
The supply and logistics of the army are also inadequate.
"Putin wants to be feared - like Stalin and Hitler," says Beevor - resistance all the more bitter?
"Putin wants to be feared - like Stalin and Hitler," says Beevor.
He considers the liberal West to be decadent and weak and believes that the shock of a brutal war of aggression can strengthen Russia.
When it comes to the much-discussed question of Putin's goals, the historian assumes that he is definitely interested in rebuilding a Russian empire.
In English, the strategy of the brutal attack is called "shock and awe".
It was exactly this strategy that Hitler followed in 1941 when he invaded the Soviet Union, when he said: "We only have to kick open the door and the whole rotten building will collapse with a crash." atrocities - such as the recent incidents in Bucha in the context of the Ukraine war - provoked only stronger resistance and no capitulation.
Human Rights Watch: War Brings 'War Crimes From All Sides'
Cruelty by Putin against his own army: does he antagonize the soldiers?
The fact that he treats his own people just as ruthlessly as his enemies "reminds me in a chilling way of Stalin," says Beevor.
Under Stalin, there are said to have been other humiliating practices in the army: soldiers were sent to the battlefields at night - not to recover the bodies of fallen comrades, but to strip their uniforms for reuse, reports Beevor.
Such humiliation of the soldiers by their own commanders led to anger and frustration - and as a result to mutinies by the Red Army in 1945. It remains to be seen whether the Russian army will also resist the warfare under Putin.
So far, no signs of a rebellion have become known.
Putin's war: Alleged fight against National Socialism as a parallel between Stalin and Hitler
Putin also seems to have copied the mission specified by Russian propaganda to liberate the enemy from Nazism and to wage a necessary war - even if it is not called that in Russia - from Stalin.
Putin seems to "grotesquely portray the Ukrainians as born-again Nazis who need to be eliminated and re-educated" - as Kremlin-affiliated author Timothy Sergeytsev described in his "totally manic article in the state agency Ria Novosti," according to Beevor.
This is what Stalin told his army to do, in order to make the soldiers think they were superior.
As his declaration of war proves, Putin also seems to be using alleged neo-Nazism in Ukraine as a tool to manipulate its people and military.
*Officially, it is said from Russia that only professional soldiers are sent to war.
But there are various sources that refute this, as
can be read on
tagesschau.de .
However, the information on how high the proportion of professional soldiers or conscripts in the Russian army as a whole and below the forces deployed in Ukraine actually is differs.
