More than 400 Russian reservists died after their commanders ran away during a Ukrainian artillery bombardment, Russian soldier says

• A Russian reservist said his unit was slaughtered in a Ukrainian attack after its officers fled.
• Around 570 of the reservists in his unit were from his home city, and only 130 survived, he said.

Around 440 Russian conscripts sent to fight in Luhansk were killed by Ukrainian shelling after they were abandoned by their unit's commanders, according to various media reports.

Russian reservist Aleksei Agafonov told The Guardian that out of the 570 mobilized draftees in his unit, only 130 survived the Ukrainian attack on November 1.

"I saw men being ripped apart in front of me, most of our unit is gone, destroyed. It was hell," he said, The Guardian's Russia affairs correspondent Pjotr Sauer reported.

A second, unnamed soldier corroborated Agafonov's account, saying that "hundreds" of reservists died that day, per The Guardian. "Two weeks of training doesn't prepare you for this," he told the outlet.

Agafonov and his battalion were ordered to dig trenches near Makiivka, a town in Luhansk, but only had three shovels in the battalion, Russian media outlet Verstka reported. Verstka is an independent news outlet that regularly publishes news that confronts or challenges the Kremlin's narratives.

When Ukraine bombarded the area with artillery, helicopters, and mortars on the morning of November 1, the reservists were "simply shot," Agafonov told the outlet.

"When it all started, the officers immediately ran away," he said, according to Verstka.

The men in Agafonov's unit were drafted as part of Russia's mass mobilization of 300,000 reservists, announced by President Vladimir Putin in the hopes of reinforcing Moscow's forces in Ukraine. Putin said on October 21 that 33,000 reservists had already joined their combat units and that 16,000 of them are already fighting.

Agafonov's unit comprised residents from the city of Voronezh, Verstka reported. In a video message to the local governor, the wives of the draftees protested the circumstances surrounding their husbands' deployment, according to the outlet.

They asked Russian authorities to rescue the men and to remove them from the frontlines, per Verstka, which reposted the video.

"On the day they arrived, they were put on the frontline. The command left the battlefield and fled," one woman said.

"Our soldiers survived as best as they could," she added. "They did not sleep, did not eat, for three days they held the line and didn't flee, unlike their commanding officers."

Moscow battles reports of mass reservist casualties

Reports of the slaughter at Makiivka have ballooned into a public scandal for Russian officials, per The Washington Post.

In a separate complaint, several pro-Russia military correspondents on Sunday published an open letter from members of Russia's 155th infantry brigade, per the Post. They claimed that 300 soldiers in their unit were killed and that half of their equipment was lost in the first four days of their deployment to Donetsk, according to the outlet.

On October 13, Anastasia Kashevarova, a pro-war Russian blogger, complained on her Telegram channel of how the Russian reservists are being treated. "I've got this to say, certain commanders should be shot. Gentlemen officers, you have no moral right at all to wear your rank and epaulettes," she wrote.

"Zinc coffins are already coming. You told us that there would be training, that they would not be sent to the front after a week. Did you lie again?" Kashevarova wrote.

The Russian Telegram channel "War on Fakes," which spreads disinformation in the Kremlin's favor and is often quoted by Russian authorities, claimed on Sunday that reports of mass casualties among the Russian reservists were fake.

Experts on the Russian armed forces say it's likely that many of Russia's reservists will serve as mere cannon fodder, with some troops given less than 10 days of training, per The New York Times.

Western intelligence now regularly reports that Russian reservists are arriving at the frontlines with poor equipment and Soviet era weapons. Some troops reached the battlefield with "barely usable rifles," the UK's defense ministry said on October 31.

Russian news outlets also reported skyrocketing prices at stores selling military gear and outdoor equipment, pointing to a scramble among mobilized men to buy basic items that Moscow has failed to provide.