High-ranking Russian officer beaten up after calling conscripts ‘cannon fodder’
A lieutenant colonel in the Russian army was pummeled after allegedly declaring to a roomful of new conscripts that they were all “cannon fodder intended for slaughter,” according to a video from the scene.
Violence was said to have broken out at the “Rubin” Palace of Sport in the Russian city of Penza, which has been converted into a makeshift barracks housing 1,080 conscripts.
A video that was shared on the pro-Ukraine Telegram channel AFU StratKom on Friday shows several reservists punching a man dressed in army fatigues in the face and kicking him after he falls down next to a row of bunkbeds.
An official’s voice over a PA system at the gym chides the brawlers for starting the fisticuffs.
“You’ll have time to brawl and fight,” he promises them, in an apparent reference to the war in Ukraine.
The Post could not independently verify the authenticity of the recording.
A man claiming to be the brother of a conscript at the mobilization center said in a separate video that the lieutenant colonel had his face “smashed up” after walking around and telling the draftees that they were all “cannon fodder” who were being sent to be slaughtered.
The man claimed that several people took part in the officer’s beating.
He also said a number of people at the crowded gym suffered medical emergencies that required ambulances to be summoned.
The conscript’s brother also alleged that “every single person there is drunk,” and predicted that the mobilized men were sure to stab one another in a knife fight.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recently announced mobilization of at least 300,000 reservists has proven extremely unpopular, sparking protests and sending tens of thousands of men fleeing across the borders.
There have been reports that reservists were being shipped off to the front lines with little to no training and only limited medical supplies.
