Some Ukrainian and Russian troops have likely been enduring large rodent infestations on the front lines, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in an intelligence update on the Ukraine war on Saturday.
The MoD said that in certain parts of the front, troops were suffering from “exceptional levels of rat and mice infestation,” which was likely the result of a “mild autumn” and “ample food from fields left fallow due to the fighting.”
It added that colder weather likely forced the rodents to find shelter in “vehicles and defensive positions.”
The plague of rats and mice will add further pressure to front line combatants’ morale, who are already facing the cold winter months of trench warfare, said the MoD.
One video uploaded to Reddit appears to show a Russian soldier filming an infestation of mice in his quarters.
Ukrainian military intelligence has suggested that Russian troops have been hit hard by the infestations, with many soldiers suffering from “mouse fever.”
“Complaints about fever from the personnel of the Russian army who are involved in the war against Ukraine were ignored by the command who considered them as another form of evading participation in the hostilities,” the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine (GUR) said.
Symptoms of the so-called “viral” mouse fever are “severe headache, fever of up to 40 degrees, rashes and redness, low blood pressure, hemorrhages in the eyes, nausea, and vomiting several times a day,” it added.
Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
While the GUR did not specify the disease which it said was affecting Russian soldiers, the symptoms and its viral nature mean it could be Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome (HFRS), “a group of clinically similar illnesses caused by hantaviruses,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The MoD added that it was not just soldiers’ health at risk from the rodents, as they also “pose a risk to military equipment by gnawing through cables.”
In Ukraine, some units have adopted stray cats to help fight the invasion of rodents.
The rat and mice infestation affecting soldiers in the Ukraine war has echoes of World War I when the massive trench systems on the Western Front were overrun with rats, gorging on the corpses of men and animals left rotting in no man’s land.
Source link
