TASS military correspondent says Putin is sending army to ‘slaughter’ in Ukraine

A military correspondent at Russian state-owned news agency TASS has launched a scathing attack on Vladimir Putin’s “insane” leadership which is sending his soldiers to “slaughter” in Ukraine.

Gleb Irisov, 31, has quit and says many of his ex-colleagues opposed the war, leading to action by the FSB security service.

A former army military translator who served in Syria, he realised the horror of the invasion on the first day when some of his old comrades had already died, he said.

“I learned that the situation was simply horrific,” he said.

“The leadership became so insane that it simply threw its own army for slaughter.

Official denials that conscripts were serving in the war were untrue, he said.

“Putin and [defence minister Sergei] Shoigu threw their poorly prepared, badly-equipped army to slaughter…in a full-scale military conflict in Europe.”

He said the middle and lower ranks had been against the war.

He spoke amid estimates that the Russian war dead is now in the tens of thousands.

His own experience of the army showed “widespread sycophancy, corruption, and theft”, he said.

“Corruption has gone from being a local phenomenon to a global one under Shoigu.

“It starts from the very bottom: at the level of the brigade, the unit - when the commander filches millions in bonuses from the budget.”

He revealed that journalists at TASS had signed an extraordinary petition opposing the war which led to the FSB’s involvement and critics being branded “traitors”.

But many employees were “brainwashed”, he said.

He claimed Russians are told “bull****” on TV over the war.

His choice had been to stay at TASS as part of a propaganda machine - or face accusations of treachery for opposing the Kremlin.

“To become a war criminal or against the state - the choice was obvious for me,” he said.

A top woman TV presenter who last week quit Gazprom-Media’s NTV channel said that many journalists pumping out Putin propaganda disagree with the war.

“Most of them do not sympathise at all with what is happening now - all this hell, horror,” said Liliya Gildeyeva, 45, who left with her daughter into exile.

Of the war she said: “I wake up every morning with a thought that this cannot be true.

“This is still some kind of delayed effect of the trauma, because this shock is getting deeper and deeper.”

Asked what she would say to Ukrainian mothers for the pain inflicted by the war, she replied: “Of course, I would say: ‘Forgive us.’

“But this will not save anyone.

“Everything that has happened is permanent.

“It will affect not only us, but our children and grandchildren too.”