The Russian army is sending wounded soldiers to their deaths to work out the location of Ukrainian snipers, officials have said, with Vladimir Putin‘s generals forcing men on crutches onto the battlefield as part of their callous ‘meat assaults’.
Harrowing footage captured by a Ukrainian reconnaissance drown shows a it picking off the limping soldiers one by one as they cross an empty field.
The incapacitated soldiers head towards Ukrainian positions but are easily hunted down by the grenade-dropping drone.
The video was shared by Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council, on his Telegram.
‘The Russians use such disabled people to try to detect the firing positions of the Defense Forces, and there are also cases when the wounded have already been discharged, but they survived, so they are given these last tasks,’ Kovalenko wrote.
The defenceless soldiers often make up the first wave in Putin’s ‘meat assaults’ – heading up the advance so the fitter troops behind them can identify the threats ahead.
Throughout the war, the Ukrainian army has reported capturing scores of Russians who are already suffering from serious injuries sustained in previous attacks.
‘Crippled regiments’ of soldiers, who have usually received little medical attention before being sent into battle, are thrown back into battle by their commanders as they try to sustain the rate of assaults even as the number of killed and wounded rises.
The so-called ‘meat grinder’ units are made up of the maimed as well as released prisoners, with the first wave often protecting the soldiers behind them in an effort to overwhelm Ukrainian defences and make incremental gains.
While the tactic has proved effective in edging the Russian frontline forward, with Moscow’s forces gaining ground in eastern Ukraine and Kursk over the past year, it has also resulted in huge manpower losses.
Russian forces suffered their heaviest losses last year since the start of the full-scale war, with approximately 150,000 killed in combat during 2024, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said yesterday.
‘In this year of fighting, (Russian President Vladimir Putin) lost more than in the previous two years of the war (combined),’ he told Ukrainian outlet TSN.
It comes after reports that North Korean soldiers sent to fight alongside the Russians are being used as ‘human mine detectors’ on the frontlines of the invasion of Ukraine.
Some 12,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent to fight alongside Vladimir Putin‘s beleaguered forces in Ukraine.
But Lieutenant Colonel ‘Leopard’ of Ukraine’s 33rd ‘Big Cats’ Separate Assault Battalion revealed that their lives are worth little to their higher-ups.
He told the Times: ‘The North Koreans have a “meat grinder” strategy. Where Ukrainians use a mine-clearing vehicle, they just use people.
‘They just walk in single file, three to four metres from each other, if one is blown up, then the medics go behind to pick up the dead, the crowd continues one after another. That’s how they pass through minefields.’
Leopard said that the soldiers sent by Kim Jong Un often refuse to be taken alive, preferring to be killed in battle or to simply run. Either way, he said, their commanders are apparently unfazed.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which has been tracking developments on the frontlines of the invasion of Ukraine since it started in February 2022, said in an assessment on January 16 that ‘the entirety of this North Korean contingent in Kursk Oblast may be killed or wounded in roughly 12 weeks.’
In early January, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said 3,800 North Korean soldiers have so far been killed or wounded in Kursk.
Fighting has been intensifying in the Russian region over recent weeks after part of it was first seized by Kyiv‘s forces back in August.
It has been defended by Ukraine since, Vladimir Putin has sent wave after wave of troops to die as ‘cannon fodder’.
So exhausted by the rate with which they have been killing their enemies, Ukrainian machine gunners are being replaced regularly, according to reports.
One soldier likened the onslaught to the bloody sieges of eastern Ukrainian cities like Bakhmut, saying that ‘after two hours [gun operators] couldn’t take it anymore.’
‘Here, the Russians need to take this territory at any cost, and are pouring all their strength into it, while we are giving everything we have to hold it,’ Sergeant Oleksandr, 46, a Ukrainian infantry platoon leader, told the New York Times.
‘We’re holding on, destroying, destroying, destroying – so much that it’s hard to even comprehend.’
