Russian soldiers in Ukraine say the Russian Defense Ministry is leaving the bodies of fallen Russian soldiers on the battlefield to avoid paying compensation to their families.
The news website Sever.Realii, run by the radio channel Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, recently conducted an interview with the mother of a Russian soldier.
She is said to have been told that her son was killed near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine on June 19, after two and a half months in Ukraine, writes Newsweek.
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On January 3, President Vladimir Putin signed an order promising five million rubles (approx. NOK 550,000) to the families of Russian soldiers killed in the war.
Soldiers who are injured on the battlefield will receive 3 million rubles (approx. NOK 330,000).
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Not profitable
The soldiers reportedly told the mother that the Russian Ministry of Defense had left her son’s body on the battlefield because it would not be “profitable” to bring him home.
She tells the news agency:
– I’m not asking for anything else, just give me the body. But the commander said he regretted and sympathized but would not send his troops to retrieve the body because the fighting was still going on.
The mother says the commander went on to say:
– Do you know how many dead bodies there are? It is terrible what is happening here. When we went on a mission, there were twenty corpses lying around.
The mother is said to have been told that the son was killed in a drone attack. She says that her son’s fellow soldiers tried to help him, but that he could not make it.
Not the first time
The mother goes on to say that at first she did not believe that her son was dead, but that she had it confirmed when she received money from her son’s bank card.
When she tried to get answers from local military authorities, she reportedly found that they had no information about her son. He should not have been listed as dead or missing.
– In my heart, I still hope that he is alive, but I know that very well myself. He hasn’t called me all this time and he definitely would have called somehow. At the front, he called me from the soldiers’ phones, but he promised that he would buy a phone and call me every day, says the mother.
It is not the first time Russian forces have expressed frustration over non-payment.
In March, the state-owned Russian news agency RIA Novosti published interviews with injured soldiers who had not received the compensation promised by the Russian president.
A week into the war, Putin stated that it was “our duty to support the families of our fallen and wounded comrades in arms”.
2023-07-28 04:05:14
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