Russian military blogger Yegor Guzenko released footage from a basement in the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (“DNR”) where Russian soldiers who showed disobedience are being held, as reported by the Russian Telegram channel Astra. Many of them are severely injured, with amputated arms and legs.
“We’re sitting in this f*****g basement, f**k. There are people here without hands, broken, abandoned, f**k,” Guzenko (“Thirteenth”) said.
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He claimed that the footage showed one of the basements in the “DNR” where military personnel deemed guilty are kept.
“This is how they [the soldiers] live, [expletive] in the Russian army those, who are no longer needed, who are hidden from everyone in pigsties,” Guzenko said.
“Everything was taken away. We are sitting in these pigsties. Nothing else is known... no one is allowed anywhere, there is no connection with our relatives,” he added.
The footage shows a basement room where soldiers with amputated limbs are kept. For example, the footage captures a man with a prosthetic leg and another whose fingers cannot bend. There are many blurred moments in the video, but it is clear that the detention conditions are quite harsh.
“They keep everyone like cattle: the wounded, the untreated, the mobilized, whoever for whatever,” said the Russian blogger.
ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November, 19, 2024
He asserted that men could be detained, for example, for cursing at an officer.
“They make ‘maimed’ regiments out of them, but do you know why? Because there aren’t enough people!” the blogger reported.
“[Putin] is simply afraid to announce mobilization, so that the people don’t find out for sure what you’re doing there. This is a real purgatory! Put your children there, you f*****g bastards!” wrote Guzenko.
The blogger added that he has passed this information to law enforcement agencies.
This camp for refuseniks is just one of many in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine
Previously, the Astra Telegram channel had already identified 16 similar places. The editors of the social media are not aware of cases where those involved in holding military personnel in illegal basements were brought to justice, but the men who were held there were.
Astra published a video from an illegal basement in Rozsipne – “Luhansk People’s Republic” – for the Russian military who refused to fight. The footage shows servicemembers sitting and sleeping on boards or directly on concrete, using plastic bottles instead of toilets, and flashlights for lighting.
The Telegram channel indicated that the basement is 15 kilometers from another camp for refuseniks – in Zaitseve in the Luhansk region. According to Astra’s sources, military personnel are often transported from Zaitseve to Rozsipne and back without being told the names of the settlements.
Astra disclosed in its report that the basements operate illegally, as military personnel should be sent to the guardhouse only after drawing up a protocol on detention or a protocol on the application of measures to ensure proceedings based on materials about a disciplinary offense.
“In this case, they [protocols] are not drawn up. In addition, guardhouses should not be located in basements,” the message read.
In another development, on Dec. 19, Alexander Shpilevoy, mobilized from Voronezh, recorded a video calling for the rotation of military personnel and an end to hostilities in Ukraine.
Three weeks later, it was revealed that he was confined in a penal guards’ facility – a punishment pit – in the Luhansk region.
Shpilevoy mentioned in the video that he decided to make his appeal after watching a live line with Vladimir Putin.
“Peace or the continuation of hostilities? Definitely peace. That’s what most citizens want. But the mobilized want it a hundred times more than ordinary civilians. And our president does not want to give it,” Shpilevoy said in a video address.
As the video started spreading on Russian social media, Shpilevoy reportedly faced threats. Upon his return from vacation to the front at the end of December, his family lost contact with him.
Concerns about his well-being led a friend to contact the military unit, which insisted he was on a combat mission.
However, on Jan. 7, the “Diary of a Cossack” Telegram channel disclosed that Shpilevoy had been placed in a “pit for punishment.”
“It turns out that at the moment, Alexander is a political prisoner; he suffered for honestly, bravely, with an open visor, saying what he thinks about this Strange Military Operation and the disenfranchised position of the mobilized,” the publication says.
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