I’d hazard a guess that their families would be in danger if it became known a soldier had allowed himself to be captured. And that perpetual life-long brainwashing had cemented in them a belief that their enemies must be monsters capable of Kim-knows-what
Wounded soldiers are a burden - it takes time, material, and people to heal them. Short-term, being dead is preferable.
So, the plan here is to convert the walking wounded into the more convenient “dead” form?
“Bold strategy, Cotton.”
And it forces the other side to use up all their bullets. It’s a win-win for Russia!
Although they do appear to have made some recent progress:
Paywalled.
"A Russian pensioner takes a box of matches into a bank and douses a row of cash machines with flammable liquid.
The 68-year-old lights a match and hesitantly creeps forward with a smartphone in one hand to film what she is about to do.
She dashes it onto the nearest machine, which immediately triggers a huge explosion.
The incident was caught on CCTV in St Petersburg in December, and there are no indications the motivations of the unlikely saboteur – who survived the explosion – were political. Instead, it appears she – like many others – was duped into it by Ukrainian phone scammers.
One out of 92 arson attacks recorded in Russia in 2024 was politically motivated, the independent Russian news site Meduza reported, with the vast majority resulting from complex scams concocted in murky call centres operating out of enemy territory."
(Edit mine)
How many fucking arson attacks do you need to assign the “vast majority” to “one out of 92”. Please. That’s just over 1.0108%
Not criticising @Askance just the news reporter.
I read it as 1 out of the 92 attacks was deliberately set by the arsonist out of their hatred of Putin’s regime, while the others were motivated by Ukrainian scammers set out to weaken Putin’s regime, but the actual people setting the fires did not have political motives.
Yes, I think they are saying 91 of 92 were the result of this type of scam, so inadvertent on the part of the actor, whereas only 1 was deliberate by that actor.
I still don’t see how the “scam” worked: what were people told as a justification for attacking ATMs?
According to the article, most are some form of “we’re from the FSB and the only way to keep us from investigating you is to torch an ATM” or “we’ll give you a bunch of money [narrator: they do not give them a bunch of money]”
Not paywalled for me.
The link goes to the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, and works for me.
Didn’t for me.
Moderating:
OK, no more of that in this thread please. breaking-news threads are not the place for these posts. Once was one thing, to reply again is far too much.
So those NK troops just seem to have vanished? Maybe they’re Bebe held in reserve for some special reason, but I doubt it-not Russia’s style. There’s always more where they came from anyway.
Note: I just saw that Newt Gingrich is a contributor to the site. Not sure how much salt to add to your reading.
Ukraine and Russia traded blame for a deadly missile strike on Saturday that killed at least four people in the dormitory of a boarding school situated in a part of Russia’s Kursk region held by Kyiv forces.
Probably a fireworks accident. 
Link Moscow bomb kills pro-Russia paramilitary leader from Ukraine | Russia | The Guardian
The cannons have fed well.
I wonder how much the Russians have gained for all this.