RUSSIA’S call-up of 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine “is almost state sponsored homicide” according to a leading military expert.
Former British Army colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told GB News: “Putin is showing what a desperate situation this is.
“Your point about the prisoners being returned – that’s really good news.
“That’s about the only good news we’ve seen coming out of Ukraine and Russia recently but the mobilisation of 300,000 extensively young fighting age males in Russia is almost state sponsored homicide.
“These young kids are going to get a day or two’s training, given a rifle and put in the trenches.”
Speaking to Patrick Christys during GB News Live, he said: “They’re fighting well-trained, highly motivated, highly capable forces in Ukraine.
“Even the basic Ukrainian troops who come to the UK to be trained have a month’s training before going into the front line.
“It’s absolutely desperate. The Russians claim they’ve lost 5,000 troops killed in this war.
“It’s officially been designated at about 50,000, the reality is it’s probably nearer 100,000.
“So to try and grab people off the streets and as your pictures are showing, these are not willing volunteers.
“And from my 30 fighting on battlefields, you really need to want to do it to be successful otherwise you’re going to have no hope.”
He added: “We must try and make sure that this doesn’t happen because those young boys who’ve been dragged off the streets, they’re going to be put in the front line like in the First World War.
“In the battles of Ypres and Passchendaele where tens, if not hundreds of thousands of young men walked into bullets to their deaths.
“And this is what we’re going to see with these Russian kids, because they will stand no chance against the the weaponry and the fight of the Ukrainians, and of course the advanced weaponry, that’s what we’re giving them as well.
“Putin and [former Putin spokesman Sergei] Markov and [Dimitry] Medvedev have been threatening us with nuclear attack – it just shows how absolutely desperate they are. Putin’s walls seem to be crumbling.
“Let’s hope there are a few sane people in the Kremlin at the moment who will remove him from power and I expect, more importantly, or more likely, it will be the Russian people who are now rising up in the sort of protests we’ve never seen before.
“Hopefully, they’re the people who are going to bring Putin down and get some sort of peace in Ukraine, rather than this carnage which is going to unfold I’m sure over the next couple of months if nothing else happens.”
