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CNN — (CNN) — The front lines of Russia’s war in Ukraine are infested with rats and mice, spreading a disease that makes soldiers vomit and bleed from their eyes, paralyzing their ability to fight and forcing troops to fight in trench warfare in Ukraine. It is said to be a reenactment of the tragic situation that plagued the city. World War I.
A Ukrainian soldier with the call sign “Kira” recalled how his battalion suffered from a “rat epidemic” while fighting in the southern Zaporizhzhya region last fall.
“Imagine going to bed and your night starts with a rat crawling into your pants or your sweater, biting your fingertips, biting your hand. Depending on your luck, you’ll be there for two or three hours. ,” Kira told CNN. She estimated that there were about 1,000 rats in the four soldiers’ trenches. She said, “It wasn’t the rats that came to visit us. We were their guests.”
The spread is partly due to seasonal changes and rat breeding cycles, but it is also an indicator of how the war has stalled after Ukrainian counterattacks were mostly repelled by Russia’s heavily fortified defenses. . In search of food and warmth during another harsh winter, the rats forage along a nearly 1,000-kilometre (621-mile) front, spreading disease and discontent.
Kira said he had tried everything to get the rats out of the bomb shelter. He allegedly poured poison, sprayed ammonia, and even prayed. Nearby stores stocked up on rodent control products and made big profits, she said. But the rats kept coming, so they tried another method.
“We had a cat named Busia, and at first she too would help and eat the mice. But then she refused because there were too many questions. The cat was 1 You can catch one or two rats, but if you have 70, that’s unrealistic.”
Videos shared by Ukrainian and Russian soldiers on social media showed the extent of the spread on the front lines. Mice and rats are seen running around under beds, in backpacks, generators, coat pockets, and pillowcases. One of his works shows a rat coming out of a Russian mortar turret like a Browning shell.
In another photo, as a cat tries to swipe a mouse on an armchair, a soldier taps the top of the seat and dozens more cats descend. The cat, hopelessly outnumbered, admits defeat and retreats.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency reported in December that there was an outbreak of “rat fever” in a number of Russian military units around Kupiansk, Kharkiv region, which the Russian government has been claiming for months. The disease is transmitted from rats to humans “through inhalation of rat feces dust or ingestion of rat feces in food,” the report said.
CNN has not been able to independently verify this report, but according to the Ukrainian military, the disease’s frightening symptoms include fever, rash, low blood pressure, bleeding eyes and vomiting, and it can be severe because it affects the kidneys. back pain, urinary problems.
As a result, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Service stated that “‘rat fever’ has significantly reduced the combat capabilities of Russian soldiers.” He did not say whether the Ukrainian military was similarly affected.
Ukrainian authorities have not mentioned any specific symptoms from the attack on Russian troops, but they have been infected with various diseases associated with living near rodents that exhibit similar symptoms, including tularemia, leptospirosis, and hantavirus. exists.
The report is reminiscent of those from World War I, where piles of waste and rotting corpses allowed “trench rats” to breed rapidly. Rats are nocturnal and are at their busiest when soldiers are trying to rest, causing a lot of stress.
In his memoirs, the British poet Robert Graves, who fought in the trenches, recalled how rats “came up from the canals and multiplied tremendously, feeding on the mass of carcasses.” The first night the new officer arrived, he “heard the sounds of a scuffle, shined his flashlight on the bed, and found two rats fighting over a severed hand on the blanket.”
During World War I, the rat population soared as the conflict stagnated. And there are concerns that Russia’s war in Ukraine may have caused the same thing. General Valery Zarzhny, head of Ukraine’s military, told The Economist late last year: “Just like in World War I, we have reached a technological level where we are at a stalemate.”
Ihor Zahorodniuk, a researcher at the National Museum of History of Ukraine, told CNN that the rat invasion is partly due to rodent breeding, which peaks in the fall, but also due to the war itself.
“Winter crops sown in the fall of 2021 were not harvested in many places in 2022, resulting in a large amount of self-seeding. “We continued to harvest a variety of crops,” he said. The war also dispersed natural enemies, allowing rats to reproduce more freely.
Rats not only cause anxiety and illness to soldiers, but they also vandalize military equipment and electrical equipment. Kira said that while he was working as a correspondent in Zaporizhzhia and living separately from other combat units, rats disrupted communications by “climbing metal boxes and chewing through the wires.”
“The rats chewed on everything, including the radio, the repeater, and the wires. They got into the car and chewed on the electrical wiring so the car wouldn’t start, and they chewed on the tank and the wheels,” Kira said. “The losses due to rats in our trenches alone amount to 1 million hryvnia.” [$26,500]”
Zahorodnyuk stressed that the damage could be significant, “because if communications are lost, lives can be lost.”
As Ukraine enters another winter, the problem is likely to get worse before it gets better. “The cold will become more and more severe, and they will go into the trenches more and more. Until they all get through this situation, the situation will not change,” Zahorodnyuk said.
In World War I, soldiers could not solve the problem of trench rats. Instead, they killed rats for sport. Trying to stab a gun with a bayonet became a form of entertainment. The population did not decline until after the war. But Zahorodniuk warned that Ukraine should not let it happen again.
“The fight against them should be organized and not rely on soldiers and volunteers who do not imagine how to fight. This is wrong. After all, this is a question of the combat capabilities of the army. We have to take care of our soldiers.”
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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