Terrified Draftees Expose Russia’s New Scheme to Cover Up Cannon Fodder Deaths
Hundreds say the military has concocted a cynical ploy to render them lost without a trace.
Alexey Malgavko/Reuters
Hundreds of Russian draftees reportedly fear they have been sent on a suicide mission by top military officials who are planning to conceal their deaths through an inventive new scheme: changing records to show they are part of a regiment that doesn’t exist.
“They assigned us to regiment 228–such a regiment does not exist,” one of the men told the independent news outlet Sota. “They want to send us to a hot spot tomorrow with machine guns [to go] against tanks, drones, and mortars on minefields. We’re just cannon fodder.”
Sota reports that they’ve obtained an audio message recorded by some of the draftees, appealing for help on behalf of the 400 men who hail from the Altai Republic. In it they say they’re being sent to storm an area near Svatove in Ukraine’s Luhansk region.
“Please help in any way you can. We’ve already been given drugs, [the opioid analgesic] Promedol, in case of serious injuries,” the message said.
The men described manipulation of their official paperwork that effectively rendered them lost without a trace.
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“Some colonel-generals came here, I don’t know, they couldn’t find us. We were tossed on the very front, we’re under the artillery.”
The move suggests Russian officials are desperate for some manpower after military analysts noted Ukrainian troops had gained more ground on the Svatove-Kremenna line in recent days. Draftees from Russia’s Tomsk region had also publicly appealed to the governor in November for help with a “difficult situation” near Svatove.
As the Kremlin now preps for a “large-scale war” against Ukraine, military officials are apparently hell-bent on making the most of the cannon fodder already on the battlefield. The independent new outlet Agentstvo reported on Thursday that wounded troops are being tossed back on the frontline without any official sign-off from doctors.
“Soldiers with shrapnel in their limbs and bullets through their lungs are being returned to the front,” the outlet noted.
Amid fears of a fresh full-scale mobilization across the whole country, the State Duma’s defense committee is also pushing to drag more Russians into the war.
“We do not have a trained mobilization reserve for waging a large-scale war, if NATO unleashes it. One out of every ten has served in the army, and nine out of ten people have not served in the army. What kind of reserve are they making?” Viktor Sobolyev, a member of the committee, told local media on Wednesday.
He said “100% of young people” should be required to train for a military specialty.
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