By Galina Korol | 2025-01-27

KYIV -- Russian commanders are sending out wounded troops to be slaughtered, according to various reports and videos from the front.

"Today is January 7, 2025. 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment, please help us. Disabled men are heading out for a combat mission. We need to resolve this issue. What's going on?" say balaclava-clad soldiers in a video published on the Mobilization|News|Conscripts Telegram channel on January 9.

In the video, soldiers show the camera the wounds they will be bearing on their next charge into Ukrainian guns: broken arms and legs, gunshot wounds and nerve damage. Some of them hobble around on crutches.

"The nerves are severed. They don't work! My arm doesn't work at all. People can barely walk. How is he going to reload his machine gun?" asks a voice off camera.

A similar incident occurred in the 74th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of Military Unit 21005, after a senior medical officer declared the wounded to be fit for service, according to two soldiers in a video published by the same Telegram channel January 15.

"He came and said that all military personnel -- regardless of whether they are on crutches or whether their bones are in casts -- are all fit for military service, and he sent them all to carry out combat missions," said one of the soldiers.

Previous medical exam findings and doctors' instructions go ignored, he said.

"I have an injury in my neck, in my spine. My face is numb. I'm blind in one eye. I have a big piece of shrapnel in my groin. My leg is broken. [The medical officer] sent me on a combat mission in this condition. I can barely walk on this leg. Now it has broken a second time," said the other soldier in the video.

These videos are just the tip of the iceberg, experienced watchers say.

"You could definitely come across at least several such cases in a week," Yan Matveyev, a Russian war correspondent with the Popular Politics YouTube channel, told Kontur.

"And here we must take into account that, of course, not all soldiers have the opportunity to record and post these appeals. This [practice] is not looked upon favorably in the army, so it is suppressed."

Bribes needed for medical care

A few days earlier on January 3, ASTRA, an independent news organization that publishes content in Russian and English, posted an article about the chaos inside the Russian army, namely in Military Unit 29593.

This unit is from Saratov and currently on the front, online open sources suggest.

ASTRA journalists have confirmed the identities of all the military personnel and their relatives, the article said.

"Our wounded who can't walk aren't evacuated. [The commanders] say 'Kill them off,'" ASTRA quoted the wife of a serviceman as saying.

"In our unit, we have commanders who say, 'You're cannon fodder,' 'you're disposable,' 'you're slaves,'" said the woman.

Even worse, the relatives of troops say they must pay the platoon commander from 20,000 to 50,000 RUB (€194 to €485) to transfer their wounded loved ones to a hospital.

Get Lost, an organization founded in October 2022 to help Russians evade conscription, also confirms instances of extortion on the front lines.

"If someone wants leave, then, as the term goes, 'You have to chip in for the commanders,'" Get Lost spokesman Ivan Chuvilyayev told Kontur.

"That means handing over all the money they [the soldiers] have and also hitting up their relatives to simply get some basic medical help after everything they've been through there," he said.

Killing off troublesome soldiers

Meanwhile, survivors who refuse to go on further combat missions are being threatened with murder by commanders.

"Rub-outs" -- the unauthorized slaying of dissenting troops by commanders -- are "completely unprovable and untraceable," Chuvilyayev explained.

"How would you know that someone has been deliberately killed off? They won't write 'cause of death ... rubbed out.' He just disappears. He's gone. He went to the front. And the war erases everything," he said.

All these cases have come to light only from the accounts of men who either deserted or fell into Ukrainian hands.

The Russian army's main tactic now is to use up soldiers like disposable items in combat, said Matveyev.

"It's just pure, cruel mathematics, where at any cost, whether by infantry assaults, or by a column of armored vehicles or in Zhigulis [ordinary cars] -- advance with an attack; do whatever you want, but you must attack. That's it," he said.

"[Russian President Vladimir] Putin can't explain why this war is needed. What can you expect from some miserable Major Propitov [a random name] sitting in this place called Donetsk and drinking himself blind," said Chuvilyayev.

"How can he motivate them? .... With kicks to the butt, shouts, threats and torture. There are no other methods."

A way out for conscientious objectors

"What is happening now is the Russian army's long-standing protracted illness, which has only gotten worse with the war," said Sergey Krivenko, director of Citizen.Army.Law, a Russian human rights group.

"Human rights organizations that work to protect ... military personnel have effectively been taken off the field in Russia, and an ombudsman for military personnel has not been created either. There is no such person a soldier could turn to," he told Kontur.

"The only [recourse] is the military prosecutor's office, but its functions are also very limited. You may contact it, but it formally cannot do anything. Its functions have been greatly curtailed," Krivenko said.

There is one potential way to avoid death on the battlefield, however.

"The right to refuse military service is enshrined in the constitution, and you may apply for alternative civilian service. In Russia, surprisingly, this still works. And doing this is our main advice," said Krivenko.

Civilian service lasts 21 months, and the applicant may work as an orderly in a hospital or nursing home or at other state and social institutions, he said.

"And right now this is a great option for not going into the army," Krivenko said.