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The sister of a Russian soldier deployed to Ukraine said troops suffered huge casualties, were given no weapons and expected to dig trenches with their bare hands.
Hundreds of newly mobilized Russian soldiers have died on the front lines in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, according to Russian media, following a three-day shelling by the Ukrainian military.
On Sunday, TV Rain, a Russian-language independent television channel that relocated to Latvia earlier this year, spoke to the relatives of two of the soldiers. Post the exchanges on Telegram.
The sister of a soldier calling Alexander, who was drafted on October 16, said they were brought to the Luhansk region on November 1 and immediately sent to the front.
“The commanders said you’re meat, that’s what they brought you here for, they’re going to kill you all anyway. They gave them a shovel for 30 people and told them to dig trenches for themselves,” he told her.
After that, the commanders told the soldiers they were going to get them food and left, according to her story. He said that 40 minutes later the men began to be hit by artillery barrages that lasted for three days.
Of the 560 who mobilized to his side, Alexander told his sister, that after the bombing they were able to capture only 31. They don’t know exactly what happened to the rest.
“They had no weapons, nothing. They gave them four grenades, they dug the ground with their hands,” Ekaterina Brazhnikova, the sister of a different soldier, told the news agency.
The accounts add to earlier reports suggesting a serious malfunction in Russia’s efforts to rush some 300,000 additional Russians into the military to fight in Ukraine.
On Friday, the UK Ministry of Defense said the Russian military may now be deploying units with the sole purpose of threatening to shoot soldiers caught retreating in Ukraine.
“These units threaten to shoot their own retreating soldiers to force attacks and have been used in previous conflicts by Russian forces,” he said, adding that this was due to low morale and reluctance to fight among troops.
Previous reports have highlighted the apparent lack of training and equipment for Russian soldiers.
In October, British intelligence reported that Russia was rushing reserve troops into battle with “difficult to use” rifles, creating a new kind of headache for Putin’s generals.
British intelligence said that in many cases these reservists arrived in Ukraine “poorly equipped”, with Russian officers concerned that some were even sent without weapons.
