Ukraine’s military says it has captured several conscripts in connection with its ongoing offensive on Russian soil.
On social media, their relatives are now desperately searching for information, but Putin denies that any conscripts are taking part in fighting.
In a video published by the Ukrainian military, a conscript soldier in his 20s is being interrogated in a forest area.
The soldier is from the Komi sub-republic in northern Russia and says in the video that he and other conscripts were sent to the Kursk region in April after a short training to guard the border.
TV4 News has found the soldier on the Russian social network Vkontakte. There, a relative confirms that the man was captured on August 6 when the Ukrainian military began its offensive on Russian soil. The man’s parents confirm to the Russian news channel Ostorozjno novosti that their son is currently conscripted and was serving in Kursk when the region was attacked by Ukrainian soldiers.
“Help! He has probably been captured”
Ukraine’s military has released several videos of young men, apparently conscripts, said to have been captured at the start of the Ukrainian offensive on Russian soil. And on social media, Russian relatives are now desperately searching for information.
“Help! My son is conscripted and is in the Kursk region. He has probably been captured,” writes a woman in a group on Vkontakte.
Requires Putin to give orders
The journalists of the independent Russian news site Vjorstka have spoken to seven relatives of conscripts serving in the Kursk region. The relatives say that they have lost contact with the soldiers and that the only information the military gives them is that no conscripts are there.
But already at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, conscripts were among the fighting units, according to the Russian exile organization “Idite lesom”, which helps Russian men avoid military service. This despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, on the contrary, that only professional, contracted soldiers participate in the fighting.
A woman is now demanding in an online appeal that Putin give orders that no conscripts should serve in the Russian regions near Ukraine where fighting is going on.
The BBC and the Russian news site Mediazona have managed to confirm that at least 159 conscripts have died since the start of the Russian invasion.