Veteran Russia-watcher Gilbert Doctorow, currently visiting St. Petersburg, published a warning to Western fools on the state of mind of the Russians he is speaking with. A long-time source of his on military matters told him the national military hospital in the city is full of wounded Russian soldiers, many among them former POWs who were released from Ukrainian captivity in the various prisoner exchanges. Doctorow believes that the Russian government has not made public what his source recounted, of those maimed and traumatized soldiers “who were savagely castrated or otherwise disabled by their Ukrainian captors, because there would be such a reaction in Russia that the government could not control it.
“If publicized, these cases would be far more inflammatory in broad Russian society than the horrendous video which circulated in social media a week ago showing the brutal execution of a dozen disarmed Russian POWs by jubilant Ukrainian soldiers. Clearly, the Kremlin is holding this back, lest detailed knowledge of the Ukrainian brutality unleash violent emotions in the Russian public,” Doctorow wrote.
His warning to the West: “In these circumstances, I call attention to the very difficult balancing act required of the Russian President. The man has nerves of steel. He is surely under great pressure from the patriotic hard-liners in the Kremlin who are au courant about the castrations and other evidence of Ukrainian depravity. One nod from Vladimir Vladimirovich and Kiev would be leveled to the ground in a matter of hours. It is tragic that Washington and Brussels confuse this restraint with incompetence, fear and other nonsense.” https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/12/04/more-observations-on-russia-today/
