Read the original article on Business Insider.
A Russian defector who is now in Europe said his unit was given almost no training before it was sent to fight in Ukraine, which left soldiers broken after they experienced the front lines.
Nikita Chibrin told CNN that the training his unit received was just a commander giving soldiers a weapon, a target, and 5,000 bullets.
“No one was doing anything. There was no actual training,” he said.
Chibrin told CNN that some of the men in his unit had bragged about how good they would be at fighting in Ukraine, saying they would be “like Rambo,” but they were then broken when they came back from being deployed.
“Those who said they'd be shooting Ukrainians easily, when they come back from the front lines … they could not even speak to me. They saw the war, they saw defeat, saw their [fellow] combatants being murdered, saw corpses.”
Chibrin was sent to Ukraine early in the war, and reports suggest that Russia's training for many soldiers has only reduced since then, as it has had to call up reservists to fight.
Reports and intelligence assessments have suggested that Russia is giving only minimal training and poor equipment to many of its soldiers.
In September, UK intelligence predicted that new troops would suffer heavily, because of how little training they received.
Chibrin said that he had initially refused to fight, but that his commander said he would go to jail and…
