If they regret being used as “Cannon fodder”, the soldiers never criticize the war itself. “We are not refusing to achieve the goal for which we are fighting, we are ready to go there”, recalled, for example, a soldier as an introduction to his message. “We are ready to fight with dignity, but not like meat”, summed up another. Because to attack what Russia still describes as a “special military operation” would amount to “to go beyond the limits of a legitimate discussion”, relieves Anna Colin Lebedev. A sociologist specializing in post-Soviet societies, she notes that, in order to establish a link with the Kremlin, these units “must proclaim their loyalty and their will to fight, but must not question the reasons why [elles] fight”.
Despite everything, the lecturer at the University of Paris-Nanterre notes that these videos can undermine the smooth speech of the Kremlin. “The mobilized are civilians, attached to their life before and above all connected. A certain number find the resources to speak out”, she recalls on Twitter, pointing out that “this is the risk to which the Russian state exposed itself in choosing mobilization“.