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A highly classified letter from the Russian Army's Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov has revealed severe concern about a full-blown insurrection headed by elite Airborne
Troops (VDV) against the Vladimir Putin's government. The internal memo was reportedly leaked to the Russian human rights activist Vladimir Osechkin. FSB officers are reportedly already
working inside VDV units to try and root out dissent. The revelations come amid heavy losses for the VDV in Ukraine with reports circulating that put the force has suffering fifty percent
killed or wounded. Morale inside Russia's elite airborne units is believed to be plummeting as a result of the heavy and constant combat attrition. The memo reads: "To Commanders
of the Military Groupings in the zone of the Special Military Operation "In connection with the recorded cases of formation of negative socio-political views and attitudes among the
personnel of airborne troops, involvement in activities aimed at discrediting the Armed Forces, reduction of controllability of units and military discipline, disruption of the performance
of ordered tasks, I order: "Assess moral-political and psychological state of the personnel of military units and subdivisions of airborne troops in the zone of the Special Military
Operation; Organize work to prevent and neutralize the influence of negative information on the personnel of military units and subdivisions of airborne troops; "In cooperation with the
military counterintelligence agencies of the Federal Security Service, to conduct covert inspections of the officers of military units and subdivisions of the airborne troops to determine
their attitude toward the actions of the political leadership of the Russian Federation, the leadership of the Armed Forces, and to identify the categories of persons most susceptible to
negative information; "Take special control over the movements of commanders of formations and military units of airborne troops outside the area of combat missions of their formations
and military units. "Remain on standby to report on the fulfillment of the said activities upon further instruction." According to British intelligence, approximately half of the
highly competent detachment of 30,000 Russian paratroopers dispatched to Ukraine may have died or been injured. According to the UK Ministry of Defence's most current assessment of the
fight, this information arose as a result of an unofficial revelation about the scale of the losses suffered by the paratrooper battalion. The MoD briefing noted: "The annual
celebrations of Russia’s Airborne Forces (VDV) Day on 2 August 2023 have been overshadowed by an apparently unsanctioned disclosure of the scope of the casualties the elite force has
suffered in Ukraine, "In a recorded address for VDV Day, the VDV’s Commander-in-Chief General Colonel Mikhail Teplinsky said that 8500 paratroopers had been wounded and later returned
to duty or had refused to leave the front line at all." The MoD added that the clip was then "quickly deleted from the Russian MoD’s official channels".