Russian conscripts given 19th century rifles, made to drink from ponds filled with dead frogs

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Russian conscripts are being given 19th century rifles, made to drink from ponds filled with dead frogs and ordered to draw enemy fire, they have revealed.

Soldiers in the Russian-backed Donbas region have spoken of how they have been sent to fight Ukraine’s forces with no training, a lack of food and water, and inadequate equipment – as Moscow’s armies continue to suffer heavy losses.

The new accounts of untrained and ill-equipped conscripts being deployed to Ukraine are a fresh indication of how stretched the military resources at the Kremlin’s disposal are, over a month into a war that has seen Vladimir Putin’s forces hobbled by logistical problems and held up by a fierce resistance.

One of the soldiers, a student conscripted in late February, said a fellow fighter told him to prepare to repel a close-quarter attack by Ukrainian forces in southwest Donbas, but said ‘I don’t even know how to fire an automatic weapon.’

The student and his unit fired back and evaded capture, but he was injured in a later battle, he told Reuters news agency. He did not say when the fighting took place. 

He said that at one point, he was forced to drink water from a fetid pond full of dead frogs because of a lack of supplies. Two other sources in contact with draftees also said the men had to drink untreated water.

The testimonies from conscripts and their friends and family came as crimes carried out by occupying Russian soldiers continued to be uncovered, and as Kyiv claimed Russia’s death toll in Ukraine is nearing 20,000.

Officials said 50 bodies found in the commuter town of Bucha – in Kyiv Oblast – had been victims of extra-judicial killings by Russian troops. Some were shown in pictures lying on the ground with hands tied behind their backs. 

The scenes have sparked international outrage, with the United Nations saying on Tuesday that all the signs from the pointed towards civilians having been directly targeted and killed in the town.

Meanwhile, Putin‘s forces are retreating from major cities in the west as they refocus their efforts on the Donbas, with 60,000 Russian reservists expected to be called in to reinforce Moscow’s offensive in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk provinces claimed by separatists.  

The Donbas armed forces are fighting alongside Russian soldiers but are not part of the Russian armed forces, which have different rules about which troops they send into combat.

Several Donbas draftees have been issued with a rifle called a Mosin, which was developed in the late 19th century and went out of production decades ago, according to three people who saw conscripts from the separatist region using the weapon.

Images shared on social media, that Reuters was not able to verify independently, also showed Donbas fighters with Mosin rifles.

Some Donbas conscripts were given the highly dangerous mission of drawing enemy fire onto themselves so other units could identify the Ukrainian positions and bomb them, according to one of the sources and video testimony from a prisoner of war published by Ukrainian forces.

While some information indicating poor conditions and morale among Donbas conscripts has emerged in social media and some local media outlets, Reuters was able to assemble one of the most comprehensive pictures to date.

Besides the student draftee, Reuters spoke to three wives of conscripts who have mobile phone contact with their partners, one acquaintance of a draftee, and one source close to the pro-Russian separatist leadership who is helping to organise supplies for the Donbas armed forces.

Reuters verified the identity of the student, as well as the other sources and the draftees they are associated with. The news agency was unable to confirm independently the accounts of what happened to the men once they were drafted.

The six sources all asked that their full names not be published, saying that they feared reprisals for speaking to foreign media.

None of the five draftees had prior military experience or training, and four of the five were given no training before they were sent into combat, according to the injured draftee, the three wives of conscripted men, and the acquaintance.

‘He never served in the army,’ said one of the partners, who gave her name as Olga and lives in the town of Makeevka. ‘He doesn’t even really know how to hold an automatic weapon.’ 

Two of the wives said their partners were deployed to the front line, where they saw heavy fighting.

‘I’m in the war,’ read a text message, seen by Reuters, that Marina, also from Makeevka, said came from her drafted husband.

Marina said she learned from messages from her husband that his unit, fighting in the Donbas region, was ordered to draw enemy fire on to themselves.

Ukrainian forces on March 12 published a video showing a prisoner of war. He said his name was Ruslan Khalilov, that he was a civil servant from Donbas and that he was sent with zero training to Mariupol where his role was to draw enemy fire to facilitate the bombing of Ukrainian targets.

A person in Donbas who knows Khalilov confirmed to Reuters his identity, that he was drafted and has no military training. Reuters established that the person knows Khalilov.

The student draftee who spoke to Reuters said that a day after reporting for duty he was put in a mortar unit then sent towards the fighting. ‘We were taught nothing,’ he wrote to Reuters via messenger app.

‘Up to that point I had only seen mortars in movies. Obviously, I didn’t know how to do anything with them.’

He said that before he left, his unit had been under repeated attack by Ukrainian troops. ‘There were lots of casualties,’ he wrote. ‘I hate the war. I don’t want it, curse it. Why are they sending me into a slaughterhouse?’

All the accounts gathered by Reuters mentioned an acute shortage of supplies. The sources described little or no safe drinking water, field rations for one man being shared among several, and units having to scavenge food.

‘We drank water with dead frogs in it,’ said the student conscript.

‘Supplies for the soldiers right now are a disaster,’ said the source close to the Donetsk separatist leadership, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Neither the Kremlin nor the separatist authorities replied to Reuters´ questions about supplies and equipment for the draftees from Donbas.

The same source said some conscripts were issued with the Mosin rifle from reserve stocks that date back to the Second World War.

The student conscript said he has seen fellow fighters using the rifle: ‘It’s like we’re fighting with World War Two muskets.’

A soldier in the Russian armed forces who is fighting near Mariupol told Reuters he had seen soldiers from the Donetsk separatist military carrying Mosin rifles. A video posted on social media on Tuesday by Russian military journalist Semyon Pegov showed a man who said he was a Donbas draftee brandishing a Mosin rifle.

Soon after the men were drafted in late February, many of their wives, mothers, and sisters started writing petitions to the separatist leadership, to Donbas draft offices, and to the Kremlin, describing their treatment and seeking help.

‘Bring us back our men,’ said one petition addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, seen by Reuters.

The three wives of draftees who spoke to Reuters said they received no definitive answers.

On March 11, about 100 women gathered outside the separatist administration´s offices in Donetsk to demand answers, in a rare public show of dissent.

Two women who took part in the gathering said Alexander Malkovsky, the head of the DNR draft office, came out and told them that men aged 18 to 27 would be exempted from the draft. Reuters couldn’t determine if this has been implemented, and was unable to reach Malkovsky.

Two of the conscripts’ wives said that since the gathering they learned from their partners that conditions had improved: some units were pulled back from the front line and allowed to sleep in abandoned homes, instead of in trenches.

After being pushed to the front line near the port of Mariupol – scene of the heaviest fighting in the war – a group of about 135 Donbas conscripts laid down their arms and refused to fight on, according to Veronika, the partner of a conscript, who said her husband was among them. Marina, partner of another conscript, said she had been in contact with a friend who was part of the same group.

‘We’re refusing (to fight),’ the friend wrote in a text message to Marina, seen by Reuters.

The men were kept in a basement by military commanders as punishment, Veronika and Marina said. Commanders verbally threatened them with reprisals but subsequently allowed the group out of the basement, pulled them back from the front line and billeted them in abandoned homes, Veronika said.

Neither the Kremlin nor separatist authorities answered Reuters questions about the incident.

All sides in the Ukraine war have systems of conscription, where young men are required by law to do military service.

Ukraine’s government has declared a general mobilisation, meaning that conscripts and reservists have been deployed to fight.

Russia says it is not deploying conscripts in Ukraine, though it has acknowledged a small number were mistakenly sent to fight. Last week, Putin ordered 134,500 more conscripts to join his army. The Kremlin denied this was related to Ukraine.

The Donetsk separatist authorities announced in late February they were drafting all fighting age men for immediate deployment.

Military recruitment officers appeared at workplaces around the Donetsk region and told employees to report for duty, while police ordered people in the streets to report to their local draft office, according to a Reuters reporter who was there in late February. Anyone not complying risks prosecution.

Reuters could not determine how many people have been called up, nor what proportion of Donbas forces is comprised of draftees.

Asked to comment about the treatment and low morale of the Donbass draftees, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a question for the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), the self-proclaimed separatist entity in Donbas. The Russian defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokeswoman for the DNR administration, after viewing Reuters questions, said there would be no response on Friday. She did not say when the administration would reply. Messages left with a spokesman for the separatist military went unanswered. 

Estimates place Russian losses during its invasion of Ukraine between 7,000 to as many as 18,000 troops. The scale of the losses has shocked experts, with many predicting before Putin’s invasion that Russian numbers would overwhelm Kyiv.

The opposite has been true, with Ukraine’s troops pushing back Russian forces in several regions, destroying or capturing thousands of Moscow’s military vehicles while killing many more Russian soldiers.      

Last week, a video emerged of a group of young Russian soldiers conscripted to fight on the frontlines in Ukraine complaining that they’ve been ‘thrown into the s**t’.

In footage taken in the back of a military vehicle, one complains: ‘Know the truth! The Russian Ministry of Defence has no idea about us, or what we’re doing here. 

‘We’ve been thrown into the s**t!’

Another adds: ‘Our rifles are from the 1940s! They don’t f***ing fire! They’re sending f***ing ordinary students into war’, according to The Times.

The soldiers, who were reportedly members of the 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, filmed themselves in the back of a lorry near Sumy, close to the border with Russia.

One – wearing a Russian army helmet too big for his head – points to himself and says, ‘I’m 18 years old.’

He then holds up his AK-47 machine gun – first issued to Soviet soldiers in 1947 – and complains, ‘We’ve been given automatic rifles to take on Grads, artillery, mortar shells. We’re asking you to spread this.’ 

President Putin vowed not to send young, untrained conscripts to the front lines of the war in Ukraine – but has since broken his promise.

One quarter of Russia’s army is made up of conscripts aged 18-27, disproportionately from poorer backgrounds where families are unable to obtain legal letters or doctors’ notes excusing their sons from battle.

Last month, a group of Russian conscripts captured by Ukraine said they were deceived into believing the war was a military training exercise and apologised for behaving ‘like fascists’.

Moscow youngster Aleksandr Morozov, 22, said: ‘Ukrainians are a strong people, they fight like beasts. Their aircraft shatters our columns utterly. Our side suffers great losses: technicians, sergeants, officers, soldiers. And we want to stop that.

‘I want to apologise to the whole of Ukraine for coming here. I do not want violence in this country. I am very ashamed.’

New conscripts are often tortured and even raped as part of brutal initiations dating back hundreds of years. 

The army’s culture of hazing (known as ‘dedovshchina’) involves using physical and psychological abuse to ‘toughen’ young recruits.

In 2019 alone there were 51,000 recorded cases of human rights violations among young Russian conscripts – and 9,890 sexual assaults, according to Moscow’s defence ministry.

Meanwhile on Monday, Kyiv claimed that Russia’s death toll is nearing 20,000, as Ukraine continues to push back invading Kremlin troops and retake ‘key terrain’ around the capital and Chernihiv.

Putin‘s forces are retreating from major cities in the west as they refocus their efforts on the Donbas, with 60,000 Russian reservists expected to be called in to reinforce Moscow’s offensive in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk provinces claimed by separatists.

The brutal siege of Mariupol is continuing where the Ukrainian civilian death toll has risen to 5,000, while a nitric acid tank in Rubizhne, Luhansk, has been shelled, forcing civilians to remain inside their homes with their windows shut. 

A red and brown cloud of poisonous smoke prompted warnings to residents to wear wet face masks after the release of the dangerous chemical, which both sides blamed on the other. 

Luhansk governor Sergiy Gaiday said Russia is planning a major attack in the region as he ordered a mass evacuation, saying: ‘We understand that they are preparing for a full-scale big breakthrough. Please don’t wait for your homes to be bombed.’

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s general staff said Russia has again used banned cluster munitions in Mykolaiv, targeting civilian buildings including a children hospital in a horrific attack which has killed 11 and wounded 61.  

British defence officials said ‘low-level fighting is likely to continue in some parts of the newly recaptured regions, but diminish significantly over this week as the remainder of Russian forces withdraw’ from Kyiv and Chernihiv.

In an intelligence update posted online, the UK says many of the Russian units ‘are likely to require significant re-equipping and refurbishment before being available to redeploy for operations in eastern Ukraine.’

On Monday, satellite images of Ukrainian civilians slaughtered in Bucha – a city in Kyiv Oblast – were released, showed bodies lining the streets more than two weeks ago, debunking Russian claims that the massacre was staged by Ukraine in order to frame its troops.

Images taken of Bucha on March 19 show dark objects strewn along a road – which match the exact positions where the rotting corpses of civilians were found by Ukrainian soldiers who recaptured the area from Russian forces at the weekend.

Russian forces were in control of the city at the time, strongly suggesting that it was Putin’s men – and not Kyiv’s – who carried out the killings. 

Kyiv now says at least 410 civilians were massacred in and around Bucha by the Russians while others were tortured and raped in what President Volodymyr Zelensky has described as ‘genocide’.

Zelensky, who appeared shattered on a visit to the area yesterday, will today address the UN Security Council where he is expected to push world leaders to impose tougher sanctions on Russia over the atrocities, send more weapons for his armed forces, and for a war crimes probe to punish the Russian commanders responsible.

In a nightly address to the Ukrainian nation on Tuesday, he said that Western sanctions on Russia ‘must finally be powerful’ – adding: ‘Did hundreds of our people have to die in agony for some European leaders to finally understand that the Russian state deserves the most severe pressure?’

He was also critical of the amount of military aid sent to Ukraine so-far, saying more equipment could have helped save civilian lives. ‘I do not blame you – I blame only the Russian military,’ he said. ‘But you could have helped.’

The United Nations said Tuesday that all the signs from Bucha pointed towards civilians having been directly targeted and killed in the town.

The UN Human Rights Office said the images emerging from the Bucha were extremely disturbing, and underlined that international law prohibited deliberate attacks on civilians.

Western leaders have united in outrage after dozens of bodies were found on the streets and in mass graves when Russian troops retreated from the devastated town, laying bare the horrors of a 40-day war that has killed thousands.

‘What we’re talking about here appears to be the direct killing and targeting of civilians in Bucha,’ rights office spokeswoman Liz Throssell told reporters in Geneva.

She cited photographs of people with their hands bound and of partially naked women whose bodies had been burnt.

‘This is extremely disturbing, and does really strongly suggest that they were directly targeted as individuals, and here, what we must stress is that under international humanitarian law, the deliberate killing of civilians is a war crime,’ she said.

Throssell added: ‘All the signs are that the victims were directly targeted and directly killed.

‘You could argue there was a military context, for example, to a building being hit; it’s hard to see what was the military context of an individual lying in the street with a bullet to the head or having their bodies burned.’

Throssell clarified that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights did not have staff on the ground in Bucha.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blames Russian troops for the killings, but the Kremlin has denied responsibility. Moscow suggested images of the corpses in Bucha were ‘fakes’.