Drafted Russian soldiers in Ukraine ‘digging trenches with their bare hands’

Drafted soldiers did not get weapons, just four grenades, say family members

Relatives of drafted Russian soldiers sent to fight in the war against Ukraine have said that the mobilised troops are suffering huge casualties and were not given weapons.

The sister of a Russian soldier said that her brother was drafted into the Russian military on 16 October. The troops were brought to the Luhansk region on 1 November, after which they were posted immediately on the frontlines. She said her brother Alexander was told to dig trenches for himself, reported Business Insider.

“The commanders said that you are meat, they brought you here for this, they will kill you all anyway. They gave them one sapper shovel for 30 people and told them to dig trenches for themselves,” the woman said, recounting what her brother told her, in an interview with TV Rain, a Russian-language independent television channel.

She added that the soldiers were then told by the commanders that they were going to get food for them and left but the mobilised men were attacked by artillery strikes just 40 minutes later.

The artillery strikes went on for three days.

Ekaterina Brazhnikova, the sister of a different mobilised soldier, said: “They had no weapons, nothing. They were given four grenades, they dug the ground with their hands.”

This comes just days after Russian military bloggers published an open letter from members of the 155th marine brigade of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, stating that they had been thrown into an "incomprehensible" assault on Ukrainian forces southwest of Donetsk, blaming the generals in charge of the operation.

In response, the Russian defence ministry denied the allegations that the naval infantry unit had been hit by disastrous losses of men and equipment in a futile offensive in eastern Ukraine.

According to the letter: "As a result of the ‘carefully’ planned offensive by the ‘great generals’, we lost about 300 people killed, wounded and missing in the course of four days. (And) half of our equipment.”

This was published by a popular military blog called Grey Zone, addressing the governor of the far eastern Primorye region where the unit was based.

The reported appeal from the marine unit criticised individual commanders by name, describing them as mediocrities who treated their men like "meat" and were only interested in furthering their own careers.