Russian court has revealed information about the food supply to Russian military units located at the eastern territories of Ukraine, that are controlled by Russian hybrid forces. The Kremlin’s party line is that there are no regular army units in the Donbas region. But the judicial bureaucracy has cracked the propaganda. The verdict of the court in Rostov-on-Don stated, that the Kremlin once in every two weeks sent 1,300 tons of food from the Rostov region to its regular troops in Ukraine.
The Kirov District Court in Rostov-on-Don adopted its verdict in November 2021 in a criminal case on corruption, the text is still freely available, link at the end of the article. According to the verdict, the deputy regional head of military nutrition of a local company was found guilty of corruption. He was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for systematically bribing the head of the Southern Military District’s Center for State Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance.
According to the text of the court’s decision, the accused’s job was to provide food to Russian servicemen in eastern Ukraine. A lieutenant colonel from the Southern Military District of the Russian Federation demanded a bribe for not interfering with food supplies. The officer was accused of threatening to disrupt supplies to Russian servicemen who are on combat duty in the “DPR” and “LPR”. The text of the verdict states that deliveries took place at least in 2018 and 2019. In the absence of a bribe, there was a delay in column deploy, at the request of sanitary control. Each such case cost Russia about 40 thousand dollars in losses.
Vigilant estimates that the supply of 1,300 tons of food a week was enough to provide about 26,000 Russian military personnel and local militants. It also follows from the court’s verdict that the supply was not performed by one company, but a whole network.
Although the Kremlin has always denied the involvement of its troops in fighting in eastern Ukraine, dozens and hundreds of investigative journalism have made it clear that the Russian military is directly involved in fighting in eastern Ukraine. It is not just about supporting artillery strikes, but also about direct battlefield engagement between the Russian military and the Ukrainian army.
Since the Kremlin removed the official court verdict, we give you a link to the web archive: https://archive.vn/CWP6m