Russia: Russian soldier who wrote about heavy losses of the Russian army in Avdiivka commits suicide – 2024-02-23 08:59:08

Friends of the Russian blogger Andrei Morozov, who had fought in the ranks of the Luhansk separatists and then the Russian armed forces in Ukraine since 2014, announced that he had killed himself. Before the news of his death became known, the Russian military wrote on Telegram that the Russian army suffered heavy losses during the capture of Avdiivka, which could reach 16,000 dead. As he wrote, the military command forced him to “take down” the post.

Sergeant Morozov, who had served as a sergeant in military units of the self-proclaimed “People’s Republic” of Donetsk, committed suicide because of the intimidation he suffered from official Russian propagandists.

The suicide of “Murz”, as was his diminutive, was confirmed by channel bloggers, as well as his wife convicted of “extremist activity” of former Russian FSB officer Igor Strelkov, Miroslava Reginskaya and lawyer Maxim Paskov.

The BBC’s Russian service could not independently confirm the information.

The latest posts

His last posts on his Telegram channel – where he had more than 100,000 followers – were a note and his will, as well as a letter to the chief military prosecutor. In the letter he states that there is a severe shortage of ammunition, heavy casualties, non-replacement of soldiers, lack of medical care in his units, negligence and opacity of the military leadership.

Before that, Marozov wrote in a post that the capture of the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka resulted in 16,000 dead and about 300 damaged armored vehicles.

Several Russian propagandists subsequently criticized Morozov. One of them called his post “another defeatist cry, which looks like a slander against the Russian Ministry of Defense.”

According to Morozov, the order to remove him from his post was given under pressure from the associates of Russian TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov, who had intimidated him. Referring to them he wrote that “they are pissed off to come and pull the trigger themselves. Well, I’ll do it myself. I will kill myself if no one dares to deal with this trivial matter. And then you will be given tanks and helicopters.”

The Russian occupier Morozov (Murz), who revealed the losses of the Russian Federation in the storming of Avdiyivka, committed suicide – Russian mass media

«Russian serviceman Andriy Morozov committed suicide because his superiors forced him to remove from his Telegram channel a… pic.twitter.com/ViFrdPiHQv

— Devana 🇺🇦 (@DevanaUkraine) February 21, 2024

Morozov’s profile

Morozov was a Stalinist blogger known in the mid-2000s as Fighting Cat Murz. In 2008, he became the first Russian blogger to be convicted of extremist activity for his online posts. He was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison for social media posts and illegal possession of weapons.

In May 2014, he went to Ukraine to fight as part of pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass. He managed to join them on the second attempt, after the first time he was captured and tortured by Russian Cossacks in Luhansk.

Source: RES-MPE