One fighter was shot twice, sent from the hospital back to the front, where he drank melted snow to live. Forced to assault Ukrainian positions repeatedly, until a grenade blinded him. Saved from the trenches by a doctor who made him a hospital orderly.
Another was jailed at 20 for minor drugs charges, sent to the front aged 23. Given almost no training, he was dead three weeks later — among likely 60 Russians killed in an assault on the very day Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated the defeat of the Nazis in Red Square.
These two stories, of remarkable survival and premature death, epitomize the squalid and exhausting loss of life in Russia’s trenches. Yet there is one distinction: the dead are prisoners, promised respite from their jail terms if they join so-called Storm-Z battalions run by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Life expectancy is short, conditions themselves tough to survive, and convicts describe being used as cannon fodder. Tens of thousands of convicts have been recruited to serve at the front line, at first by the mercenary group Wagner — a scheme then taken over by the defense ministry.
CNN spoke to the mother of one convict, Andrei, who was jailed aged 20 on drug charges and sent to the front line as part of the Russian military’s recruitment program. The mother provided extensive video, documentation and chat messages to verify her son’s story, and his early death, just three weeks after deployment.
CNN also spoke to a rare survivor of the Storm-Z units, Sergei — who was first interviewed by phone in a military hospital months earlier and last week recounted the savage and deteriorating life in the Russian trenches.
While the appalling fighting conditions are well known, much Russian testimony is from prisoners of war, and provided through Ukrainian facilitators. These two stories represent rare testimony delivered directly from Russians. CNN has changed the names and removed key details from these two accounts for the safety of the interviewees.
Read their stories here.
