Newly mobilized Russian battalion destroyed by Ukrainian military in Luhansk region
The Ukrainian military destroyed a battalion of mobilized Russians from the Voronezh region near the village of Makiivka in the Svatove district of the Luhansk region. The death toll is several hundred people, reported the Russian news outlet Verstka, citing one of the survivors, Alexei Agafonov.
According to his estimates, the death toll may exceed 500 people.
Agafonov said that the commander of the newly mobilized, who were undergoing military training in the military unit 2079, promised that they would be brought to the Svatove area, where they would join the "territorial defense" 15 kilometers from the front line. However, on the night of November 1 to 2, the entire battalion was brought to the front line. They were ordered to dig in and hold the line of defense.
"We were thrown into the bush, told to dig in. We had three shovels for the entire battalion. There was no support at all. We dug in as best as we could, and in the morning the shelling began - artillery, Grads, mortars, drones. We were just being killed. When it all started, the officers immediately ran away. In between attacks, we tried to dig in, but we were immediately identified by drones and just shot. Of the 570 people, 29 are alive, another 12 were wounded, the rest are done, “ Agafonov said.
He also added that before that, at least one more battalion had been destroyed at the same positions. According to him, he saw dozens of corpses, some of them "even have military cards sticking out of their pockets."
"On TV, they show that everything is beautiful, but in fact, here in the Luhansk region, it is the mobilized who are thrown into the battle. And when we withdrew from there, with no officers around, when we were already walking back, we saw that only contract soldiers and volunteers were on the third line, and mobilized people were on the front line," Agafonov said.
According to him, local and contract soldiers do not want to fight, and mobilized from all over Russia are brought to the Svatove area to close the gaps in the defense.