The founder of the fantasy genre, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, explaining the nature of orcs, wrote that they were the embodiment of evil, slaves held together by fear and the cruelty of their masters. They lived in envy and anger toward everything that others could create. Thanks to mobile video cameras, we can now observe how fear and cruelty keep a real, not fictional, army together. Texty.org.ua investigated repressive disciplinary practices and abuse in the Russian armed forces. This is an ancient tradition that may date back to the Golden Horde.Читати українською

It all started with the Soviet Union. Russia faced a total and systemic crisis — a large-scale shortage of military equipment. Clues about this started long ago: independent observers wrote about the major reduction of armored vehicles in storage bases and the resource for counting lost equipment. Oryx published impressive figures of Russian losses.Читати українською

Almost every day in Ukraine, terrorist attacks take place, explosions occur near and inside the buildings of the recruiting office, and military vehicles burn. The public debate continues as to whether the perpetrators of these attacks are marginalized people offended by the government, convinced ideological supporters of the "Russian world," or simply seekers of easy money offered by Russian special services.Texty.org.ua journalists, pretended to be potential "terrorists" talked to "recruiters" of Russian intelligence, who are looking for people to burn buildings and vehicles of recruiting office in Ukraine, that is a part of mobilization campaign.Читати українською

Chief of the General Staff — Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2014-2019, General Viktor Muzhenko (now a leading researcher at the Armed Forces Research Institute), in an interview with media Fakty, assessed the current situation at the front, outlined the main problems in the army and listed the key reasons for the failure of the counteroffensive. Texty.org.ua publishes key fragments of the conversation in the form of Muzhenko's organized direct speech.Читати українською

Tetiana and Oleksandr Muzyrov took in nine-year-old Oleksii in January 2023. A year earlier, on February 28, 2022, in the first days of the Russian army's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, their 26-year-old son Dmytro was killed in the village of Kyinka near Chernihiv.Читати українською

Recently, the Russians' advance has accelerated, while their level of losses remains unchanged. We have analyzed how certain stages of the Russian-Ukrainian war correlate with the dynamics of territorial losses and gains, as well as the loss of armored vehicles. To do this, we used data from the DeepState and Oryx expert communities.Читати українською

Company cash is the money that soldiers donate from their monthly salaries for various everyday needs related to their service. This practice exists in almost all of the Ukrainian military units we spoke to.This phenomenon is a vivid manifestation of the self-organization inherent in Ukrainians. Today, at the company level, the army actually has an informal system in place that helps units perform combat missions and maintain combat capability, compensating for the gaps in army logistics and the complexities of the outdated document management system.Читати українською

After the offensive operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the summer of 2023, despite the complete dedication of the Ukrainian army, did not yield the desired result. There is a lack of quality public discussion about Ukraine's future optimal strategy in the war with Russia.Читати українськоюAuthor: Mykola Bieleskov, Chief Consultant at the Military Policy Department of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, Senior Analyst at the Charitable Foundation "Come Back Alive". All opinions expressed in the text are personal and in no way should be interpreted as the official position of the NISS and the Charitable Foundation "Come Back Alive".Translated by Daniel Asher

In orphanages, schools, and camps, the military teaches children how to handle weapons. The Telegram channels of military brigades explain who the enemy is: Poland and the Baltic states.Читати українською

"The bastards are on the move. Moving fast. Adjustments needed. While they march, you count the seconds and pray for the shell to hit its mark in time. Flying in strong winds is nerve-racking. On one hand, the risk of losing the drone and being left 'blind' until a replacement arrives is high. On the other, right now, someone's son, brother, sister, mother, or father might be dying at the front lines."Читати українською