1/ Dozens of mobilised Russian soldiers who retreated from the front line near Svatove in eastern Ukraine have been forcibly returned from Russia to Ukraine, where the Russian army will likely imprison them in a basement and starve them to make them go back to the fighting. ⬇️
2/ The independent Russian outlet TV Rain reports that over 50 mobilised men from Voronezh went to fight at Makiivka at the end of October but had to retreat after suffering many casualties from heavy Ukrainian shelling
3/ Earlier reports said their officers told them, "You are meat, that's why you were brought here." They were reportedly abandoned by their officers on the front line, armed only with grenades, and had to dig trenches with their bare hands.
4/ Hundreds are said to have been killed and wounded in several days of shelling. According to the wife of one of the survivors, around 50 men retreated from Makiivka after three days and made their way to the Russian border, about 126 km away.
5/ They were disarmed at the border and taken a short distance further to the military training range at Valuyki in Russia's Belgorod oblast, where they were held for several weeks.
6/ TV Rain reports: "A psychologist worked with the soldiers every day to persuade them to return to the front. Soon the military prosecutor's office became involved and began threatening the mobilised men with criminal charges, although they had not signed any contracts.
7/ After Alyona [the wife of one of the soldiers] complained about the conditions in the unit, her husband and the rest of his fellow soldiers were allowed to go to the baths and had their clothes washed. However, Ivan was asked to tell his wife "not to make any more fuss".
8/ Together with his fellow servicemen, Ivan wrote a report refusing to fight. According to Alyona, there were at least 18 people like her husband who refused to be sent back to the front.
9/ However, on the morning of 17 November, the servicemen were told that today they would be taken to Zaitseve in the Luhansk region "in connection with evacuation", according to Alyona.
10/ The day before, Alyona said, they were taken for a medical check-up – the first time since they had been drafted. Her husband's fitness category was changed from 'B' to 'A', a higher one.
11/ Around 16:00 the mobilized men were loaded onto a military police truck and driven to an unknown destination.
12/ According to Alyona, the sister of one of the soldiers arrived in Valuyki and tried first to film the loading and then to go after them to find out where they were being taken, but the police detained her. Since then, Alena has had no contact with her or her husband."
13/ It's likely that Alyona's husband and the other men have been taken to the basement of the House of Culture at Zaitseve, where at least 300 men are reportedly being held prisoner by the army and are being given barely enough food to keep them alive.
14/ The Russian army has been using basement-prisons in several places in the occupied territories of Ukraine to hold troops who are refusing to go back to the front lines and is reportedly using starvation, threats and beatings to make them return. /end

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More from @ChrisO_wiki

Nov 19
1/ At least 27 people have been killed in Russia itself (plus Crimea) by Ukrainian attacks, according to the We Can Explain Telegram channel. This excludes a number of accidental landmine deaths. It highlights the extent to which the war is affecting Russia's border regions. ⬇️ Image
2/ Cross-border shelling has affected several regions along the Russia-Ukraine border, especially Belgorod oblast. There have also been fatalities in Bryansk and Kursk oblasts, plus three dead in the 8 October Kerch Bridge attack in Crimea.

We Can Explain reports:
3/ "The largest number of incidents occurred in the autumn, with Belgorod region suffering the most. In total, at least 27 people have been victims of various attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Russian territory since the start of the war, according to open data.
Read 13 tweets
Nov 18
1/ Video has emerged of Ukrainian soldiers apparently opening fire on a group of surrendered Russian prisoners, killing all of them, after an unsurrendered Russian opened fire on the Ukrainians. Is this a war crime? Here's why it may be in a grey area. ⬇️
2/ Incidents of this kind are unfortunately not uncommon in war. Here's an example that took place in the Battle of Menin Road on 20 September 1917, as recorded in the official Australian war history. Image
3/ Prisoners are of course protected under the Geneva Conventions. But the Conventions also prohibit the practice of 'perfidy'. Here's what Article 37 of the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 says:
Read 19 tweets
Nov 18
It looks like Twitter is in its final death spiral - with an estimated 88% of employees quitting or being fired by @elonmusk, there's a strong possibility of it going dark very soon for simple lack of staff to do basic maintenance. So:
1) I'm now on Mastodon at ChrisO_wiki@mastodon.social - feel free to follow me there

2) Good instructions here on how to migrate:
3) If you have stuff you need to archive from Twitter, now's the time to do it. Even if it doesn't go entirely dark imminently, I'd expect old data to become unavailable in the near future. Purging data storage would be an obvious cost-cutting measure.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 17
1/ Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the notorious Wagner mercenary group, says that he is not currently recruiting anally raped prisoners but wants to create a separate "cock division" to ensure that other convict soldiers do not have to serve with such untouchable outcasts. ⬇️ Image
2/ Prizoghin himself is a former convict – he was sentenced to 13 years behind bars in 1981 for fraud and robbery, including violently attacking lone women to steal their valuables. His prison contacts were invaluable in dealing with a post-Soviet world dominated by gangsters.
3/ In a reply to a Russian news organisation asking about why certain prisoners are not being accepted into Wagner, Prigozhin writes:

"All societies have certain rules by which they live. For example, in America it is customary for men to fuck each other in the ass.
Read 22 tweets
Nov 16
1/ The Wagner mercenary group has already executed as many as 40 of its own men, according to Russian human rights activist Olga Romanova. She says in an interview that Wagner has recruited around 35,000-40,000 prisoners. Relatives say some were tortured into joining. ⬇️ Image
2/ Olga Romanova is the founder of the human rights group Russia Behind Bars, which campaigns for the rights of prisoners. It has been closely following the widespread recruitment by Wagner of prisoners from Russian penal colonies, which has taken place across Russia.
3/ The recent gruesome murder on camera of a Wagner convict soldier is not an isolated incident, says Romanova in an interview with the Telegram channel 'We can explain'. Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin has been open about killing his own men for infractions of his rules.
Read 13 tweets
Nov 16
1/ The Russian army is holding many as 300 mobilised Russian soldiers captive in the basement of the House of Culture (=cultural centre) of the village of Zaitseve in Luhansk oblast, giving them hardly any food, according to the independent Astra media collective. ⬇️ Image
2/ The men are being held there for refusing to return to the front lines. According to the wife of one of them, "My husband says that there are already about 300 of them. New people are constantly brought in."
3/ "This is in a large basement in the House of Culture in Zaitseve. They are fed once a day: one dry ration [pack] for 5-6 people. [The officers] constantly make threats."
Read 7 tweets

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