The deaths of two experienced Russian drone operators in Ukraine have fueled a frenzy among pro-Kremlin military bloggers, who say the specialists were sent to fight as regular foot soldiers.
In a video recorded before their deaths, the two operators said they had been assigned to a suicide mission with an assault unit as punishment for arguing with their commander.
The clip of the specialists – Dmitry “Goodwin” Lysakovsky and Sergei “Ernest” Gritsai – was published posthumously, appearing on Friday on the Telegram channel “North Wind”.
The footage has been widely circulated on Russian Telegram channels, which identified the soldiers as members of the 87th Rifle Regiment fighting near Pokrovsk in Donetsk.
Lysakovsky and Gritsai accused their new commander, Igor Puzyk, of disbanding their drone squad after they quarreled with him and filtered their team members into infantry platoons.
They further alleged that Puzyk had facilitated drug trafficking in his unit and falsely reported battlefield gains under his command.
Lysakovsky recorded a separate video message in which he harshly criticized Puzyk and claimed that the commander was being influenced by a soldier with ties to Ukrainian intelligence.
“Lying is an absolute norm,” Lysakovsky said, according to a translation by Estonian analyst WarTranslated.
“I’m recording this in case I don’t come back from the attack, and only then will this message carry any weight,” added Lysakovsky.
He later said in another video that he was ready to leave to “sul” with his infantry unit and called on Russian men not to join the war.
“Your job is to die here so that the regimental commander, reporting to the highest levels, looks good,” he said. “These are his personal serfs.”
These two videos where he appears were also published by “North Wind” on Friday.
Previous Russian media reports suggested that Lysakovsky was well-known even before the war in Ukraine, writing that he was a lawyer and financier fighting for the Donetsk People’s Republic, a separatist faction in Ukraine, as early as 2014.
He became head of the DPR’s aerial reconnaissance unit by 2016, according to a report that year by Kommersant, which said he had been charged with raiding Moscow corporations.
As for Gritsai, Russian military bloggers who claimed to know him personally reported that he was a career officer.
In their joint video complaint, the two men said they had followed their commander’s orders because they had taken an “oath to the Fatherland”.
Russia’s reaction and an official response
The footage sparked an outcry over the weekend among Russian military bloggers, many of whom independently reported that the two men had been killed in battle.
Part of the backlash comes from the assessment of experts in the field that Lysakovsky and Gritsai had been two of the best drone operators on the front lines.
Some posted screenshots of Russian text messages in which Lysakovsky asked for help transferring out of his unit.
“No supplies, no maps, no minefield plans. Nothing,” Lysakovsky wrote in a Sept. 10 message.
Dozens of Russian commentators have criticized the circumstances of the deaths, with some calling for a ban on the assignment of specialists such as snipers or drone operators to infantry attacks.
“The very fact of redeploying an effective reconnaissance UAV crew to assault infantry under current conditions is, to put it mildly, sabotage,” wrote pro-Kremlin Russian journalist Alexander Kots.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the deaths of Gritsei and Lysakovsky on Sunday, writing that it would investigate their deaths.
The investigation will be conducted under the “personal supervision” of Viktor Goremykin, deputy defense minister, and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s armed forces, the ministry said in its statement.
Some of the uproar has subsided since the announcement. However, some prominent bloggers continued to express concern about what they say is a growing phenomenon of Russian commanders wasting valuable specialists on frontal assaults.
Political commentator Svyatoslav Golikov wrote that the problem had become “systematic” in the army due to the lack of manpower on the battlefield.
“This particular issue will be resolved. But only because it caused a stir,” Telegram channel Two Majors wrote.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
Pokrovsk, the town near which Lysakovsky and Gritsai were stationed, has been a focal point and a source of much bloodshed on Ukraine’s eastern front.
Russian troops have been pushing hard to take the logistics hub in recent months, closing in on the outskirts of the city after weeks of slow progress.