There was a time, not that long ago, when the Red Army was a force to be reckoned with — when it opened up a second front in order to join the allies in defeating Hitler and bringing the Second World War to an end.

And we’ve all seen pictures and films of those parades in Red Square, where the troops and their armaments were put on full display, both to instill patriotic fervor in the Russian people and to strike fear in the peoples of the free world.

But what has happened to the Russian military might of yesteryear? What have four years of war against the much smaller, less militarily-equipped nation of Ukraine done to Russia’s pride and joy?

To begin with, nearly 500,000 Russian troops have been killed since the invasion of February 24, 2022. Vladimir Putin tried ordering a wide-scale mobilization in September of that year, but it resulted in the flight from the country of hundreds of thousands of draft-age citizens. Since then — fearful of repeating his first mistake — Putin has instead relied on other means of attracting “volunteers.” In addition to convincing a number of other countries to send troops to join the battle, he has promised high pay and bonuses for Russian soldiers and the families of those who are killed in the war, and has turned to recruitment of prison inmates, drunks, and homeless individuals: people desperate to escape their present situations and willing to risk their lives for the promise of financial gain.

But even that hasn’t been enough. So his military leaders have been sending even the most seriously wounded men back into battle, retrieving them from their homes or the hospitals where they were supposed to be recuperating, or simply ordering them to continue fighting without ever receiving medical care. Some examples:

Pavel Podgrushny, 38, had been sentenced to eight years in prison for causing a fatal car crash. To avoid the hell of prison, he enlisted in the army and was sent to a different kind of hell: the front lines in Ukraine, where he was wounded and hospitalized in April 2024. According to a relative, he suffered head and chest injuries, lost his left eye, and also lost his hearing when his eardrums ruptured. He was declared temporarily (!) unfit for service and sent home to recover, but never received the documents confirming his status.

In September 2025, Podgrushny was summoned to a recruitment center, was later declared a deserter, and for the next six months tried to obtain a formal discharge. Then one day he was detained and his phone confiscated. His family has not heard from him since, and it is not known where he is, or even if he is still alive. [RFE/RL’s Russian Service, June 4, 2026.]

;Another case is that of Mikhail, who was seriously wounded in 2024, leaving him with badly limited vision in his one sighted eye. According to a rights activist named Igor, a medical commission “declared [Mikhail] fit for duty in five minutes, detained him, and the next day, they sent him — blind — to the front.” [Id.]

Igor says that these are not isolated cases. “They force them to sign a new contract. They’re usually locked up in the guardhouse for a few days. They’re simply left in the barracks, in a cell, without food or water. And they’re forced to sign a paper stating that the last military medical commission [finding] was ‘fake.’ After that, they organize a new commission for them. It will then declare the discharged soldier fit for service. There’s no way out. The wounded and their families are just stunned as their own army drags them out of their homes, blind and on crutches. But the situation is getting even worse. To avoid searching for discharged soldiers at addresses where they may not be registered, commanders sometimes save time by hauling them straight from the hospital.” [Id.]

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That is what happened to Andrei Perevalov, 26. According to his friend Sergei:

“He has fractures, multiple shrapnel [wounds] all over his body.” Andrei’s right arm now hangs, useless, by his side. But the military “took him straight to the front, to the combat zone [near Pokrovsk]. He’s recording voice messages for me — you can hear explosions in the background. He’s no fighter in this condition, and they’re giving the order to ‘move forward.’ What’s going on? Are they just throwing bodies all over Ukraine? Squeezing us until the last drop of blood?” [Id.]

Sergei said that some of the wounded don’t even make it to the hospital before being ordered to join a new assault. Wounded soldiers contact their units “from a trench or a destroyed building. They tell you their name, age, where and how they were wounded. Commanders simply refuse to hospitalize them, even if the wounds are open.” [Id.]

And so on, ad infinitum.

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Like me, your first reaction to this story was probably horror and revulsion at the level of inhumanity to which human beings can sink.

But once I stopped gagging, I thought of the desperation of the officers who feel they have no option but to send even the most horrifically wounded men back into battle, simply to fill an empty space left by one who didn’t survive.

And I thought of Putin and his generals — Shoigu, Gerasimov, and all the others — commanding a military force so diminished by four years of fighting a war they should never have started in the first place that it is now largely populated by invalids.

What are Putin’s choices now? Another mass mobilization, risking yet another exodus like the last one? Or — in the best-case scenario — finally conceding that he must negotiate a ceasefire and peace treaty on terms that may not be exactly what he wants?

Like all dictators, Putin finally embarked on one adventure too many and is paying the price. His popularity has waned; his cities are being attacked by Ukrainian missiles and drones; and he spends more and more time cowering in bunkers.

And he deserves every bit of it — for all of the lives, both Ukrainian and Russian, that have been destroyed by his “special military operation.” Tragically, his downfall will come too late to save those other lives; but it may bring some satisfaction to the survivors.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
6/5/26