Camp for wounded and AWOL soldiers who are being sent back to Ukraine was organized in Kuzbass.

In Yurga (Kemerovo region), on the basis of the 74th brigade, there is a tent city in which “more than a thousand” military personnel are being held as prisoners. Four servicemen who are stationed there and two relatives of the military told ASTRA about this. According to the interlocutors, a so-called “penal regiment” is being formed in the camp to send the wounded and sick who did not wait for a medical examination, who escaped from service or were transferred to this unit after conflicts with the previous command. “There are people without fingers, there are grandfathers who do not understand where they are, they are on crutches,” says one of the soldiers with whom ASTRA spoke.

The next “batch” was promised to be sent to war the other day, and military equipment began to be loaded into wagons.

“We will be escorted like cattle. We will insulate the wagons at our own expense, they said. The same way they used to transport prisoners in ’45. The same way, no antrances, no exits,” he claims in a conversation with ASTRA. Some people were here in November. There was the first dispatch to Kursk, someone has already been killed.”

According to the military, they are not allowed to leave the camp and use their phones, and for any offenses or requests to treat them “humanly” they are severely beaten.

“In fact, the officials don’t know much about what happened, they consider themselves cool and right,” said to ASTRA a wife of a soldier. “A comrade from the company was handed over. The military police took him away, pepper-sprayed him in the face and beat him,” another source said.

According to them, the military police also beat the perpetrators, handcuffing them. On the territory of the camp there is a room for the guilty, where the military sleep on the concrete floor without food and water.

“They put people in 30 people per 10 square meters and let them go to the toilet once a day. Or they may forget — people go into bottles, and sometimes even under themselves,” says one of the soldiers.

“Penalty takers” are punished either in this way or by being sent to the “SMO”. Some of the men have been there for several months, and, apparently, in an unclear status. Recently, security forces came to one of them at home in his hometown — he is on the wanted list for “unauthorized abandonment of the unit,” although he has been in the camp since autumn.

As the wife of one of the soldiers told ASTRA, new personal files are being filed for men. At the same time, they are not given documents under the pretext that they can escape.

“So they’re being held there illegally? Unofficially? Are they going to be sent to a meat assault? The husband said: “Talk to the journalists so that people know that we even exist. So that people know if something happens to us,” she said.

ASTRA’s interlocutors also spoke about the “incident” with the death of a military man at the training ground.

“One of them was taken out of service, he had all the documents that he needed to be hospitalized. The battalion commander, Colonel Beloglazov, decided differently — he sent him to the training ground anyway. On the same day, this man died. According to the doctors, he suffered an epileptic seizure while passing through the scout lane. While he was being carried, his heart stopped,” says one of the soldiers.

The same case is described by two other military personnel whom ASTRA spoke to.

“My husband has lost 15 kilograms. They are fed once a day. You can’t say anything against, because you automatically become a stormtrooper. I’m afraid for his life. They’re all beaten up there. They don’t mind serving, but as people. And they are treated worse than dogs there,” says the wife of a military man. “Dissident people used to be burned at the stake by the Inquisition, but now they are being taken to the front. That’s why people are running, because if that’s the case in Russia, then there’s a lot of shit behind the tape. I hope he’s right, that he’s a p*, and that this is a part of his life [missing],” he believes one of ASTRA’s interlocutors.