17/ "Everywhere around I saw burnt, scorched equipment. There were people lying there who were burnt to such an extent they looked as if they were infected. That's how it was."
Full-scale invasion and national resilience, broadcasted live.
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Belgorod soldiers sent to Kharkiv border combat mission with hours’ notice
15/ The men were sent to the front line in Russia's Belgorod region, "to some city or village bordering the Kharkiv region, with Ukraine. So we arrived there, they said you have literally a few hours, and you are now going on a combat mission…"
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Soldiers question lack of training, forced to dig instead
13/ "They gave us sapper shovels and told us to dig. We dug trenches, we dug fortifications, we dug foxholes. And somehow no one even had a question, well, some were afraid to even hint at why we weren’t training there, shooting, or anything."
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Prisoner’s uniforms ill-fitting, bullet-ridden; recruits trained only in digging trenches
12/ Vadim says that he and his fellow prisoners were given uniforms that were the wrong size, and pierced with old bullet holes. The recruits were given only 10 days' training that consisted entirely of digging trenches and foxholes.
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Searched, stripped of valuables, thrown into dugouts.
11/ "They searched everyone, took money, took bank cards, took phones, everything that could connect with the outside world in general and threw us into these dugouts."
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Boss berates employees, calling them worthless and forgotten.
9/ "Some guy comes in. I assume that it was some boss. He starts talking for sure, comes in, starts telling us what pieces of shit we are, that nobody gives a damn about us, that we are absolutely not people, no one will remember us, no matter what we do.
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Prisoners trained and armed in Luhansk, Ukraine, with automatic rifle incident.
10/ "He had an automatic rifle with him, he pulled the bolt and just started shooting at the air. And that was it." The prisoners were sent to a village in Luhansk in Ukraine for training and equipping.
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Prisoner’s forced choice: brutal assault or a “wonderful” alternative
7/ "They kicked us for a while, and then this masked Federal Penitentiary Service officer comes in again and says, you have a choice. He says: either you will be literally fucked, or you have this option. A wonderful one.
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Convicts recruited by Wagner and Russian MoD claim forced enlistment
3/ Tens of thousands of convicts were recruited from 2022 onwards under the auspices of the Wagner Group and later, after Wagner was dismantled, directly by the Russian Ministry of Defence. However, perhaps predictably, detainees say they are being forced to sign up.
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US allows Australia to ship tanks to Ukraine
Despite private protests, Washington eventually gave permission for Australia to begin shipping out the U.S.-made tanks to Ukraine, ABC reported.