Whilst terrible, parts of this war are fascinating: Russia's increasing use of private mercenaries (Wagner, mostly) is quite telling: Putin is above all a pragmatist and realises his money is better spent on a private war corp to deliver results than his own endemically corrupt and venal Russian Army, Witness the alleged 'performance bonus' Wagner get for capturing Bakhmut; hence their insistence on throwing thousands of (cheap) Russian undesirables (ethnics and mobilised convicts) into that particular meat grinder. I'm not sure where Wagner buy their kit from, but I would not be surprised if they didn't somehow have back door access to some tasty kit via the open market. I mean, if you had the means, you'd chose some decent Hechler & Koch armoury over some WW2 era AK's, right? I bet the Swiss are up to their necks in sending the good shit their way (happy to be proved wrong, of course).