Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ A Russian soldier fighting near Pokrovsk says that the area is a scene of carnage, with dead Russians lying everywhere. Soldiers' families are being sent death notices even before the men go into assaults. Only four out of his group of 120 men survived one assault. ⬇️

2/ A Russian soldier from Orenburg with the call sign 'Elephant', fighting with the 5th Separate Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade (military unit 41698), has given a vivid account of his experiences fighting near Krasnohorivka and Pokrovsk, and how he was sent to Ukraine.

3/ He says that he signed a military contract in the western Russian city of Ulyanovsk in April 2024. Afterwards, he and several dozen others – including 33 Indian men – were sent to Ukraine and were immediately confined in a basement near Donetsk, to prevent them escaping.

4/ Everyone's phones and documents were confiscated, and they were only allowed to go to the toilet or smoke under escort.

After two months of living under guard in the basement, he was asked to join a tank unit, even though his contract specified a role as a driver.

5/ He was taken to a village behind the front line and was put in another basement, under armed guard again.

He soon found that he had been tricked: "You've arrived with the third assault brigade, in the infantry," he was told.

6/ The men objected, saying, "Actually, we're from logistics, we shouldn't be here, they promised to pick us up," but were threatened with execution if they made a fuss. "If you talk too much, you won't live long."

7/ A few days later he was sent into the battle of Krasnohorivka, in which he was one of the few survivors of a failed assault involving 46 Russian vehicles that were mostly disabled or destroyed by the Ukrainians.

8/ "[O]n 12 September 2024, they took us out, put us in an infantry fighting vehicle, woke us up at one in the morning, put us in bulletproof vests, took our documents, took our phones, put us in the IFV, and sent us off.

9/ "We were driving toward Krasnohorivka, past Krasnohorivka about a kilometer [further]. Between the 10 vehicles, two got away. The rest of us, 120 people, they killed us all. [Our two vehicles] returned."

https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1834276903277978037

10/ "The four of us got out. We walked for six days through minefields. Behind Ukrainian lines, they hit us with cluster munitions, they shot at us from dugouts, from every crevice they could. But we got away. Before reaching Krasnohorivka, we ran into our own outpost...

11/ "We gave them our call signs and told them everything that had happened. To which they replied, "We're bringing you ammunition, you understand, extra ammo, grenades, we're sending you four cans of stew, a loaf of bread."

12/ "And they send us back. They say we're sending you back because you didn't complete the task, since we never got there, we were destroyed by drones. It was pure hell there. They mowed us down, I don't know, they didn't even let us raise our heads."

13/ Two of the survivors had crippling injuries and had to be left behind by the two remaining able-bodied survivors, one of whom was the soldier in the video.

The man was subsequently sent to fight in the Pokrovsk area, which he says is even worse.

14/ "People shouldn't see this, shouldn't hear this. It was just brutal. They were mowing people down, as if, I don't know, they were walking across a field and just cutting the grass. There are still corpses lying on the roads there, with tanks running over them.

15/ "There are torn bodies, charred bodies. No one is taking them away. Don't believe those who say they are missing in action. That's not true, that's all. They are lying there in the fields because no one is bothering to remove them.

16/ "It's just a nightmare, it's hell we've been through."

The soldier blames his commanders: "Without mortar preparation, without artillery preparation, they simply wiped us out. I'll tell you the truth, they wiped us out."

17/ Before they were sent on the assault, he says, his commanders told the men: "You faggots, you assholes, you're not people, you're meat, you must. You must go, you must kill, kill, go."

18/ Now he and a comrade are hiding out on the battlefield, seeking to survive without getting involved in any more assaults and trying to escape the wrath of his commanders, who he says will execute them if they are caught:

19/ "Right now, we're hiding from everyone, trying to get away, because if they catch us, they'll 100% wipe us out, because we know a lot. There were corpses lying there, I simply can't explain it to you. If I had a phone, I would have filmed it.

20/ "They were lying there, they were all charred, torn apart, all swollen."

He says that his commanders knew that the men would all be killed; the man he is with was declared dead six days before the assault. He believes that the command is hiding the true scale of the losses.

21/ The man also says that his commanders, whom he names as 'Vulcan' (the commander) and his deputy 'Mamai', routinely extort and execute the men under their command: "They were eliminating people, eliminating those soldiers who were undesirable..."

22/ If the unit loses a drone, the men are forced to pay for a replacement out of their own salaries: "[T]hey demanded that I buy them a drone for 300,000 or 400,000 rubles [$3,700–5,000], and they simply replaced it. It's like that."

23/ He appeals to military prosecutors to take action against the commanders, and comments: "You have to prepare before going there, and not just run into machine guns. Some guys ran out, but they were simply torn apart. Simply torn apart."

24/ "Those who made it, made it. Those who didn't, didn't. They fired [on us] with cluster munitions] and machine guns. I want to tell you one thing: the military prosecutor's office should look into this. I really want this, and I hope that this will happen." /end

Source:
t.me/ne_zhdi_novost…