According to a former mercenary with the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group who fought alongside the Russian army, the Russian military’s failure to conquer Kiev was inevitable because they had never directly faced a serious enemy in the preceding years.
Before opting to go public with his experience inside the clandestine private military business, Marat Gabidullin took part in Wagner Group missions on behalf of the Kremlin in Syria and in a prior conflict in Ukraine.
Gabidullin, 55, left the Wagner organisation in 2019, but said he received a call from a recruiter inviting him to return to fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine a few months before Russia launched the invasion on Feb. 24.
He rejected, in part because he felt Russian forces were not up to the task, despite their boasting about their stockpile of modern weaponry and victories in Syria, where they assisted President Bashar al-Assad in defeating an armed insurgency.
‘They were absolutely taken aback by the Ukrainian army’s tough resistance and the fact that they were up against an actual army,’ Gabidullin said of Russia’s defeats in Ukraine.
He claimed that Russian officials told him that when they invaded Ukraine, they anticipated to encounter ragtag militias rather than well-trained regular army.
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