[Mil Times] NOVOPETRIVKA, Ukraine — Few jobs are less enviable these days than that of a Russian mobilized soldier deployed to Ukraine.Since Vladimir Putin’s declaration of partial military mobilization on Sept. 21, dozens of videos have emerged showing the dire conditions in which those drafted into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are forced to serve. Conscripts have been sleeping under the open sky, given paltry food and faulty weapons, and their officers concern themselves with drinking rather than providing any sort of training before they are sent to the front.
Yet others even further down the socioeconomic pecking order have been forced into service: the men of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, the Russian puppet states in eastern Ukraine whose male population was press-ganged en masse this summer. Interviews with locals and documents recently recovered by Military Times from abandoned Russian positions in the former frontline village of Novopetrivka, in southern Ukraine’s Mykolaiv oblast, offer a glimpse of the day-to-day existence.
Located 40 kilometers north of the city of Kherson, Novopetrivka sat in the heart of Russia’s defensive line on the right bank of the Dnipro River for over six months. After Russian troops captured Kherson in the opening days of the war in early March, their advance on the city of Mykolaiv was repulsed by Ukrainian defenders. They quickly settled into Novopetrivka.
Military Times visited the village on Nov. 12, just two days after its liberation by Ukrainian forces. The signs of occupation were fresh, particularly a series of Z’s - the symbol of the Russian campaign - spray-painted on tractors and other vehicles.
"[The Russians] came on the 27th or 28th of February," said Viktor, a 50-year old villager. "Columns were passing through the village night and day, as they attacked Mykolaiv. But then our guys beat them there [at Mykolaiv], and they ran back here and entrenched. There was a heavy battle here - a tank was destroyed over there, my house was hit by a shell - but [Ukrainian forces] couldn’t push them out," he says.
In these early days, the Russians were interested in attempting to win over the local populace. Viktor and others in Novopetrivka describe good treatment and genuine friendliness shortly after the occupation. But the mood quickly shifted.
"[The Russians] could see that we were not interested in their propaganda," Viktor said. "They started to lose their temper, especially as they could no longer beat [Ukrainian forces] on the battlefield. By the summer, they were regularly taking people for torture - most of them simply disappeared," he said.
There was also resentment among different sections of the Russian and pro-Russian forces stationed in Novopetrivka, with stark differences in living conditions leading to tension.
"The Russians [and Donetsk/Luhansk troops] were living in the trenches, doing the actual fighting," Viktor says. "But in the village itself, Chechens and Buryats were staying in people’s houses, not fighting at all. They would just go around the village and rob as they pleased and threaten anyone who tried to stop them - both locals and Russians. The Russians did not like them at all," he says.