Russia is secretly transporting its dead and wounded toBelarus to disguise the true death toll inUkraine .- Eyewitnesses described overflowing morgues and hospitals filled with 'disfigured' soldiers, RadioFreeEurope reported.
Russia is secretly transporting its dead and wounded soldiers to Belarus to disguise the true number of casualties in Ukraine, reports say.
Eyewitnesses told RadioFreeEurope that the morgue in Mazyr, Belarus, is overflowing with corpses and that wounded Russian troops are flooding the area's hospitals.
One eyewitness told the outlet that he had seen many "black sacks" being loaded from military ambulances onto Russian railway cars.
"Passengers at the Mazyr train station were shocked by the number of corpses being loaded on the train," he told the outlet. "After people started shooting video, the military caught them and ordered them to remove it."
The outlet shared images and videos that appear to show mobile hospitals and military ambulances in southern Belarus that could be being used to treat and transport Russian troops.
More than 2,500 soldiers' corpses had been shipped from the Homel region in Belarus back to Russia by train or plane as of March 13, one employee of the regional
The Kremlin has been elusive about how many of its troops have been killed in Ukraine, making the actual death toll difficult to confirm.
Russia acknowledged on March 2 that nearly 500 soldiers had been killed but has given no updates since.
US intelligence estimates that around 7,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine so far, according to The New York Times, and that's a conservative estimate.
Doctors and local residents claimed that hospitals in the cities of Mazyr and Homel are overflowing with wounded Russian soldiers, RFE/RL said.
In early March, officials began discharging patients from a local hospital in Homel to make room for Russian troops, multiple residents told RFE/RL.
"There are so many wounded Russians there -- it's just a horror. Terribly disfigured. It is impossible to listen to their moans throughout the whole hospital," one resident who was treated in the Homel hospital told the outlet.
A doctor at Mazyr's main city hospital told RFE/RL that the site was guarded by police and security agencies, and doctors were threatened with firing if they spoke about the situation.
The doctor said that all physicians at the hospital had been tasked with treating wounded Russian soldiers, even those from more specialized professions.
Another doctor in Homel said there were fears of a medicine shortage, particularly anti-tetanus drugs often used to treat soldiers with wounds from shrapnel and bullets.
Belarus, a former Soviet Republic, is a close ally of Russia, and its President Alexander Lukashenko defended Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday.