Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Numerous Russian soldiers are ending up in hospital after being beaten, tortured or shot at by their officers, or mutilating themselves to escape the front lines, according to an account from a female Russian medic. ⬇️

https://twitter.com/i/status/1607420075497111554/video/1

2/ According to the medic, a woman named Margarita, she had to treat soldiers who had been subjected to violence by their own officers after refusing to go into combat. In one case, she says, they had been made to dig their own mass grave and lie in it while being shot at.

3/ "They dug a pit and then were forced to lie down in it," says Margarita. "Then others, at gunpoint, were forced to shovel in dirt from above."

4/ An officer subsequently fired into the pit as the men were lying in it, partly covered in dirt. "If they hit someone, too bad. Anyone who survived crawled out of that pit completely mad. They didn't care what happened to them next."

5/ Many of Margarita's patients had suffered severe punishment beatings which caused serious injuries. One man "had been hit in the head so hard that he lost consciousness… He was in pretty bad shape… There were a lot of guys like that."

6/ Frontline troops experienced horrendous conditions, lacking ammunition, transport and food. "The boys in the trenches were hungry and in rags. They hadn't been paid for months." All the military equipment she saw "was stopped, destroyed, or broken down."

7/ As a result, some soldiers deliberately shot themselves to escape their misery. "They would shoot themselves in the leg because after weeks in the trenches they couldn't even walk anymore. The damp and freezing conditions just rotted their feet."

8/ "When their boots were removed, I was in horror; I'd never seen such things before. Gangrene, dried blood -- you couldn't even find their toes. There was nothing for us to do but amputate." /end

9/ Margarita's experience as a field medic was so traumatising that – along with her suffering serious sexual harassment – she too ended up in hospital, needing psychiatric care.

Source:
rferl.org/a/women-russia…