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On October 20, 2024, a prominent Chinese social media influencer known as "Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher," who has 1.7 million followers on X, posted a recording of a live-streamed video chat session between two Chinese nationals who were serving in the Russian army. One of the men said that there have been "command failure after command failure" among Russian commanders on his front and that he had openly disagreed with their way of fighting. He added that the families of many fallen soldiers aren’t compensated financially because the Russian army marks bodies that were left on the battlefield or unidentifiable as "missing in action." The other man said that this is a common situation on his front as well, and he said that there had so far been 153 Chinese nationals killed in combat on his front alone, and probably more if counting other fronts. He also said that there was a small contingent of North Korean troops participating in the war as well, but that they are not [as]tough [as] people say and "were gone in just one day" after entering the combat. On the subject of deserters, the two men discussed how captured deserters are executed or violently beaten and tortured by other soldiers. The video has garnered 1.1 million views on X.
Chinese Soldier 1: "When I was in Donbas, I posted a video. I said it was a command failure. I criticized how [the Russians] fought. I cursed them and I argued with them on the front line. There are so many problems everywhere, they really have so many issues in every place. Each unit is different from the other units; each one fights differently…But one thing is for certain: command failures are the norm. Damn, it's just command failure after command failure, this is really just how things always are."
Chinese Soldier 2: "About that death compensation and such - "
1: "In some places, they don't give compensation at all. They don't compensate for several situations, like they don't compensate for missing persons. Those bodies lying everywhere, those are all considered 'missing.' When faces are so badly damaged by explosions that you can't tell who is who, can't identify whose body it is – they don't compensate for those either. Just think about how many cases that is – no compensation for any of them."
2: "Too many. We have many here who weren't compensated. You can’t see their military tags, and some people were blown to pieces -"
1: "You just can't identify who they are."
2: "Damn, they were processed as missing in action. Even my records showed this. Today, when I went to submit the casualty list, the death toll on my list had risen to 153 people, all Chinese, who went in."
1: "A hundred plus from our country alone?"
2: "Yes, from our country, in my frontline unit – the original Luhansk line I was at. That's 153. And that's not even counting your side. If we count your side, it's probably even more."
1: "There aren't many Chinese people in our area, right?"
2: "We have North Korean soldiers here, but damn it, they went in and were just gone right away. Damn, people say North Koreans are tough. Forget that. [laughter] They went in and were gone in just one day. Eight of them, all at the commander level."
1: "Do you have a lot of deserters on your side?"
2: "No, any deserters on our side are executed on the spot."
1: "It's the same on our side. We caught a deserter before - after he ran away, we caught him and brought him back. We didn't shoot him, but gave him a beating. After the beating, we threw him in a shipping container - we had containers there. We threw him inside in winter. Man, it was freezing cold, and we didn’t even give him a padded coat. When we dragged him out the next morning, he was barely alive from the cold. We tortured him half to death, that deserter. We tortured him half to death – first torturing him for about half a month, then after that half month, we kicked him out."
2: "They're tied to a tree with red tape and then whipped on their butt."
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