Ukraine: Russian conscripts have to dig trenches with their bare hands: TV rain

• Russian media reported that hundreds of Russians who were recruited have already died in Ukraine.
• “They received four grenades and dug the ground with their own hands,” said the sister of one of the recruits.
• Previous reports had highlighted the lack of training and equipment given to Russian soldiers.

The sister of a Russian soldier who was deployed to Ukraine said the troops had suffered heavy casualties, had not handed over weapons and were expected to dig trenches with their own hands.

Hundreds of recently mobilized Russian soldiers have been killed on the front line in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, according to Russian news outlets, three days after the Ukrainian army bombed.

On Sunday, TV Rain, an independent Russian-language television channel that moved to Latvia earlier this year, spoke to the relatives of two of the soldiers. Exchanges posted on cable.

The sister of a soldier named Alexander, who was recruited on October 16, said that they were brought to the Luhansk region on November 1 and were immediately sent to the front.

He told her, “The commanders said you are meat, they brought you here for this, and they will kill you anyway. They gave them one machining shovel for 30 people and told them to dig trenches for themselves.”

Then the commanders told the soldiers that they would get food for them, and they left, according to her account. After 40 minutes, she said, the men began being bombarded, which lasted for three days.

Of the 560 who were mobilized beside him, Alexander told his sister, after the bombing that they were only 31 people. And they don’t know exactly what happened to the rest.

“They had no weapons, nothing. They were given four grenades, and they dug the ground with their own hands,” Ekaterina Braznikova, the sister of another mobilized soldier, told news outlets.

The accounts add to previous reports suggesting a serious flaw in Russia’s efforts to push an additional 300,000 Russians into the military to fight in Ukraine.

on Friday, and The British Ministry of Defense said The Russian military is likely now deploying units with the sole purpose of threatening to shoot soldiers who are caught retreating into Ukraine.

“These units threaten to shoot their retreating soldiers in order to launch attacks and they have been used by Russian forces in previous conflicts,” she added, adding that this is due to low morale and unwillingness to fight among the forces.

Previous reports have highlighted the apparent lack of training and equipment for Russian soldiers.

In October, British intelligence said that Russia was rushing reservists into battle with ‘hard-to-use’ gunscreating a new kind of headache for Putin’s generals.

British intelligence said these reservists in many cases arrived in “poorly equipped” Ukraine, amid concern among Russian officers that some personnel were sent even without weapons.