Free Republic

Vladimir Putin's commanders are forcing his conscript soldiers at gunpoint to remain at the frontline. They are using a brutal Stalin tactic to prevent Russian reservist troops leaving their positions, say men who have seen the horror of the cannon-fodder killing fields. 'People are abandoned in the trenches as if homeless and littered with corpses,' complained Russian reservist draftees in a new video appealing directly to Vladimir Putin. 'Retreat-blocking detachments were set up against us and they did not let us out of positions.' They are forced at gunpoint to remain in position, a tactic used by Stalin's cruel SMERSH...

Some pro-Kremlin figures have openly glorified wartime dictator Stalin, while the current patriotic fervour has drowned out unvarnished accounts of Soviet military blunders or infamous "barrier troops" who shot deserters. - 'Drowned in Russian blood' - Viktor Astafyev, a writer known for his grim WWII stories, claims that Russia's war losses were much higher than the estimated 27 million and military commanders won the war at the expense of "a huge amount of blood." "It is they who threw people in the fire like straw," the war veteran wrote in a letter recently published by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta,...