Russian soldier in winter uniform with the Kalashnikov machine gun on the forest background.

Russian Soldiers Shooting Themselves in Legs to Avoid Fighting (It’s Supposed to Be the Foot, Guys, Go For the Foot)

You know that old expression “shooting yourself in the foot”? Well, some soldiers on the frontlines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are taking it a little too seriously – and the body part in question seems to have gotten lost in translation.

According to the New York Post, “morale is so low among invading Russian forces that soldiers have reportedly been shooting themselves in the legs to avoid fighting – using Ukrainian ammunition to make it appear they were hit by the defenders.”

Oof. Taking your leg out of commission seems like a high price to pay to avoid conflict – and yet, we can’t say we wouldn’t be considering every imaginable way to get out of the armed forces if we were sent to war just to stroke some insane dictator’s ego.

The threat to soldiers’ lives is very real, so they have a right to be scared. Around 14,000 soldiers have died because of the conflict, according to Ukrainian government estimates.

“They’ve been shooting at us for 14 days,” one Russian soldier was quoted by the US Sun. “We’re scared. We’re stealing food, breaking into houses. We’re killing civilians.”

Shooting yourself in the leg seems like a minor inconvenience compared to the trauma of murdering innocent people. It certainly gets the troops out of the war zone and into a hospital, where they can enjoy pain killers and green Jell-O. (They do have Jell-O there, right?)

Soldiers that don’t escape (or end up dead) tend to get captured by Ukrainian forces, and have been shown on video weeping and apologizing for their misdeeds.

All around, it’s a shitshow. So do you what you gotta do, gentlemen, and if that means shooting yourself, oh well. Just steer clear of your head…and other precious body parts.

Cover Photo: big-dan (Getty Images)

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