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Nearly five months into Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” and after myriad reports of troops resorting to desperate measures to ditch the war, Russia’s Defense Ministry on Thursday suddenly announced it was giving some soldiers in Ukraine’s Donbas a “chance to rest.”
The supposed break was announced by a spokesman for the ministry to Russian journalists early Thursday, according to TASS news agency. It was framed as a compassionate gesture meant to ensure the well-being of troops, with a spokesman quoted as saying the time would be used to “replenish combat capabilities” and allow troops to “receive letters and packages from home.”
The announcement came after the Institute for the Study of War noted that, for the first time in the full-scale invasion, Russia had not boasted of any new territorial gains, a fact which experts said seemed to indicate they had “largely initiated an operational pause.”