Russia abandons its dead soldiers on the battlefield, claims Ukraine

Russia’s military is using mobile crematoriums to dispose of its dead rather than send the bodies home, or is abandoning its fallen soldiers entirely, Ukraine says.

A destroyed Russian tank in Trostyanets, Ukraine. Russia has been accused of leaving corpses in tanks. Picture: Getty Images

Russia’s military is using mobile crematoriums to dispose of its dead rather than send the bodies home, or is abandoning its fallen soldiers entirely, Ukraine has said.

The Kremlin’s forces have been accused of failing to retrieve the remains of those killed in the fighting, instead allowing Ukraine to collect them.

Those collected by Russia are incinerated in mobile crematoriums in Crimea and Belarus, said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“They are lying there in the fields and the Russians don’t take them. There are corpses inside ruined tanks; they’re burnt and difficult to get out,” he said.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukraine had the bodies of at least 2000 Russian soldiers in refrigerated storage across the country.

Fire and smoke lighting up the night sky, east of Kharkiv. Picture: AFP

“We are counting them all. We have the remains in fridges. We say to them, take them, they are in body bags, we can give them to the Red Cross, send them to the Belarusian border, to wherever you want, we’ll give you these bodies,” she said.

Ms Vereshchuk added that this would require Russia to send lists of the missing via the International Committee of the Red Cross, which Ukraine would then compare with the bodies it had and could return those that matched.

Russia, however, had not shown any indication of wishing to do this, according to Ms Vereshchuk.

It has been suggested that Russia is choosing not to collect its dead in order to mask the true figure of its losses in the war.

TUkrainian troops stand next to rubble of a destroyed building in the northeastern city of Trostianets. Picture: AFP

NATO estimates that the Russian army has lost between 7000 and 15,000 soldiers since the start of the invasion on February 24. Russia has said 1351 of its troops have been killed.

This week the ministry of defence in Moscow released a video of injured veterans of the war being awarded medals for bravery. The medals were awarded in a hospital and most of those given them had missing limbs.

Mr Zelensky has said the Kremlin is affording less respect to those killed during its invasion of Ukraine than is usually given to dead pets.

“We’ve all had a moment in our lives when someone has passed away, maybe not even close people or relatives. Listen: even when a dog or a cat dies, that’s just not how to behave,” Mr Zelensky said in an online interview with Russian journalists.

“I’m saying this to you as the President of a country that is fighting with Russian soldiers … It’s a war, but they are not animals.”

The Times

People pray as they seek shelter in a church after an air raid siren sounded as they visited an Israeli field hospital in Mostyska, Ukraine. Picture: Getty Images