Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Another account has emerged of the fate of the Russian 1439th Regiment, which was reported to have been virtually wiped out in March 2023 during disastrous attacks on Ukrainian positions near Avdiivka. The mother of one of the casualties has spoken of what happened. ⬇️

2/ Baikal Journal reports on the story of 24-year-old Pavel Iratov (a pseudonym) from Ust-Kut, Irkutsk region, who was mobilised in October 2022. Despite having deficient vision he went willingly, as he considered it his duty and his great-grandfather was a WW2 veteran.

3/ He was sent to the 'Donetsk People's Republic' (DNR) in December and assigned to the 1439th Regiment, under the DNR's 1st Slavyansk Brigade. The mobilised men from the brigade found themselves being "considered meat and led to slaughter", in their own words.

4/ They recorded three video appeals to Vladimir Putin, saying that their DNR commanders were firing machine guns at them for refusing to join assault units. Their relatives also appealed to the Russian government to help the men.

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1631940640110985216

5/ According to Pavel's mother Alla, the soldiers lived in abandoned houses in a village near Novoazovsk on the Black Sea coast. He lived with 15 fellow soldiers. As there were only 2 sofas and 2 beds in the house, most of the men slept on the floor.

6/ Alla says there was almost no provision: they had to buy clothes, shoes and food at their own expense. "They bought meat from the locals and cooked it themselves. The sour soup in aluminium cans that they were given [by the army], as my son said, was no longer a problem."

7/ The men were told that they would work in the rear areas in territorial defence roles, but this did not happen. On 22 February they were loaded into KAMAZ trucks and taken to the frontline village of Spartak south of Avdiivka.

8/ Pavel told his mother: "They collected our military ID cards in order to stamp out the unit to which we were assigned. They wrote all kinds of nonsense, but they only messed up our military IDs.

9/ The kid was an assistant machine-gunner, but they wrote that he was a company commander. I was a machine-gunner, but now it says 'anti-tank grenade launcher'."

10/ Pavel died a few days later when his entire convoy of five armoured personnel carriers was destroyed while travelling to the village of Vodiane, south-west of Avdiivka. His body was not recovered.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641533429735890954/video/1

11/ "The guys said they saw bodies in the field that had not been picked up since February," says Alla. "According to the commander, things are being done very slowly because of the constant shelling and he will not risk the living for the dead."

12/ Because his body has not been found or identified, he is considered missing in action. His mother is trying to establish definitively what happened to him and hopes he is still alive.

"I feel awfully sorry for the boys," Alla says.

13/ "They were caught between two fires: the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the command of the First Slavyansk Brigade, which does not consider the boys as human beings but calls them cannon fodder. It is one thing to defend objects that have been recaptured.

14/ "But throwing people who have never held a machine gun in their hands into an assault is despicable. It's hell out there. I promised Pavel to hold on and not to cry. But I'm not succeeding." /end

Source:
baikal-journal.ru/2023/05/22/pus…