International- A Russian soldier claimed that his commanders told him to burn the belongings of his dead comrades.
- He said that he couldn't do it and secretly buried the items, which included documents, phones and wallets.
A Russian soldier has claimed he was told to burn the personal belongings of his dead comrades, per a Russian report.
The soldier from the 394th Regiment fighting in the Zaporizhzhia direction told Russian Telegram outlet Caution News that his commanders gave him a backpack full of possessions to destroy.
"They demanded that we burn documents, phones, wallets, cards of the wounded and dead. But I couldn't," the soldier told the outlet while speaking under the condition of anonymity.
He said that he buried the objects instead, which belonged to wounded and dead Russian soldiers.
The regiment is made of conscripts, contractors, and ex-prisoners from the Kamchatka Territory from Russia's Far East, per Caution News.
The soldier said that the regiment had suitcases filled with documents belonging to wounded and dead soldiers, which had been sitting there since July instead of being sent to relatives.
Since the beginning of the war, Moscow has been accused of going to extraordinary lengths to hide the true scale of troop losses from the Russian public.
This has included Ukraine's allegations that morgues are piling up with unclaimed dead Russians whose bodies Russia would not send home for burial to hide the true death toll.
Russia is believed to have suffered more than 300,000 casualties in Ukraine, per Western estimates.
The soldier spoke about other abuses within his regiment, including one situation in which another soldier was thrown into "a hole" for misconduct.
A second soldier from the regiment said the commander would take bribes of 100,000 rubles, or around $1,000, to reassign men away from the fighting on the front line.
The soldiers also claimed that the leadership would take away their badges and documents before sending them on assault missions and would not organize the evacuation of wounded and dead.
The soldiers said they wanted the Ministry of Defense to examine the legality of the actions of the 5th Army command.