Russia is angry about reports that drone pilots are being sent to die as infantry

The clip of the specialists – Dmitry “Goodwin” Lysakovsky and Sergei “Ernest” Gritsai – was published posthumously and appeared on Friday on the Telegram channel “North Wind”.

The footage has since circulated widely on Russian Telegram channels and 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 unit after an argument with him and sending their team members to infantry platoons.

They also alleged that Puzyk promoted drug trafficking in his unit and made false statements about battlefield gains under his command.

Lysakovsky recorded a separate video message in which he sharply criticized Puzyk and claimed that the commander was being influenced by a soldier who had ties to Ukrainian intelligence.

“Lies are the absolute norm,” Lysakovsky said, according to a translation by Estonian analyst WarTranslated.

“I am recording this in case I do not return from the attack. Only then will this message have any meaning,” Lysakovsky added.

He later said in another video that he was about to set off on a “storm” with his infantry unit and called on Russian men not to take part in the war.

“Their job is to die here so that the regimental commander, who reports to his superiors, looks good,” he said. “They are his personal serfs.”

These two videos with him were also released by “North Wind” on Friday.

Previous Russian media reports indicate that Lysakovsky was already well-known before the Ukraine war. For example, he wrote that he was a lawyer and financier who had fought for the Donetsk People's Republic, a separatist faction in Ukraine, in 2014.

In 2016, he was promoted to head of the Donetsk People's Republic's air reconnaissance unit, according to a report in Kommersant magazine that same year. The report said he was accused of raiding a company in Moscow.

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 obeyed their commander's orders because they had sworn an “oath to the fatherland.”

Russian backlash and an official response

The footage sparked an outcry among Russian military bloggers over the weekend, with many of them independently reporting that the two men had been killed in combat.

The violent reactions are partly based on assessments by local experts that Lysakovsky and Gritsai were two of the best drone pilots on the front line.

Several published screenshots of Russian text messages in which Lysakovsky asked for help in being transferred from his unit.

“There are no supplies, no maps, no plans of the minefields. Nothing,” Lysakowski wrote in a message dated September 10.

Dozens of Russian commentators sharply criticized the circumstances of the deaths. Some called for a ban on the use of specialists such as snipers or drone pilots in infantry attacks.

“The mere fact of converting an effective drone reconnaissance team into assault infantry under the 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 and said their deaths were under investigation.

The investigation will be under the “personal control” of Deputy Defense Minister Viktor Goremykin and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, the ministry said in a statement.

Since the announcement, the excitement has died down somewhat, but several prominent bloggers have continued to voice their concerns about what they believe is an increasing pattern of Russian commanders wasting valuable specialists on frontal attacks.

Political commentator Svyatoslav Golikov wrote that the problem had become “systematic” in the military due to a lack of manpower on the battlefield.

“This particular issue is being resolved. But only because it has caused a stir,” wrote the Telegram channel Two Majors.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside of regular business hours.

Pokrovsk, the city near which Lysakovsky and Gritsai were stationed, was a flashpoint and a source of great bloodshed on the Eastern Front of Ukraine.

Russian troops have been fighting intensively to capture the logistics center in recent months and, after weeks of slow advance, are now approaching the outskirts of the city.