An empire collapses from the inside just like this. On August 9, a logistics team from the 1455th Motorized Rifle Regiment in the Russian “Dnepr” grouping near Zaporizhzhia got hit by a Ukrainian FPV drone near Nesteryanka, panicked, and opened fire on their own comrades from the 299th Guards Airborne Regiment dug in nearby. The airborne troops shot back immediately.
Friendly Fire and the Cover-Up
The result was 21-year-old private Arkadiy Reshetnikov killed and junior lieutenant Viktor Osipov, sergeant Ruslan Dikambaev, and sergeant Rustam Nazarov wounded. All from the same side.
Documents leaked by an officer inside the grouping spell it out. The 1455th belongs to the 19th Motorized Rifle Division of the 58th Army under Colonel Denis Mironov. The political officer who ran the investigation, Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Shcherbina, is now accused of systemic incompetence, dodging responsibility, and trying to bury the incident by pinning it on the battalion commander.
Russian military logic at work. When your own troops are so poorly trained and led that they cannot tell friendly positions apart under drone pressure, the priority is fixing the problem: making sure nobody higher up gets any paperwork.
A Broken Command Structure
A fuck-up like this happens all the time. The army burned through three years of meat to produce this. Coordination between motorized rifle and airborne units has broken down so badly that they shoot each other on contact.
There is no unified command picture, no fire discipline, and no trust between branches. Only fear, amateur marksmanship, and a political officer whose real talent is covering his own ass.
The Rot Behind the Propaganda
Every time Moscow’s propagandists whine about Ukrainian internal problems or Western fatigue, remember this. Their rear is eating itself. Their soldiers are dying because the man next to them cannot tell an enemy drone from basic battlefield awareness.
While Ukraine scales up drone production, integrates new long-range systems, and prepares to license Patriot and Tomahawk manufacturing, the Russian army is still losing men to its own chaotic fire in 2026.
Pressure Until It Cracks
The state project survives only by feeding more bodies into the meat grinder and hoping the West loses nerve first. It will not work.
The only thing that ends it is continued pressure until the imperial structure cracks beyond repair. Shcherbina can try to sweep his report under the rug. The corpses keep piling up anyway.