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Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine who are caught drinking or being insubordinate are forced into “Storm-Z” punishment squads and sent to the most dangerous parts of the front lines to face likely death, according to a new report.

At least five of these penal battalions, staffed by ex-convicts and noncompliant troops, were thrown into some of the heaviest fighting in a bid to repel Kyiv’s counteroffensive in eastern and southern Ukraine this summer, reported Reuters Tuesday, citing interviews with 13 people familiar with the matter.

“Storm fighters, they’re just meat,” said one regular soldier from army unit no. 40318 who was deployed near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine in May and June.

He said he had given medical treatment to a group of six or seven wounded “Storm-Z” fighters on the battlefield, disobeying an order from a commander to ditch the injured, which he said was in line with the officers’ general attitude towards punishment squad members.

“If the commandants catch anyone with the smell of alcohol on their breath, then they immediately send them to the Storm squads,” claimed the soldier, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals in Russia.

Russian state-controlled media outlets have reported on “Storm-Z” squads and their participation in fierce battles — but Reuters’ investigation, which includes interviews with five fighters in the units, all speaking to the agency anonymously, offers the first glimpse into how the units are formed and used on the battlefield.

The “Storm-Z” squads — reminiscent of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s World War II-era punishment squads — are each comprised of about 100-150 fighters and embedded within regular army units. They have typically been sent to the most vulnerable sections of the front, resulting in heavy casualties.

One soldier, who was recruited from prison where he was serving time on a theft conviction, told Reuters that 105 of the 120 men in his “Storm-Z” unit embedded with the 237th regiment were killed or wounded in fighting near Bakhmut in June.

The penal squads, which, unlike the privately owned Wagner mercenary group, fall under the direct control of Russia’s defense ministry, combine convicts who volunteer to fight in exchange for the promise of a pardon with regular soldiers being punished for drinking and other infractions, the people interviewed said.

The “Storm-Z” squads are useful because they can be deployed as expendable cannon fodder, according to Conflict Intelligence Team, an independent organization that’s tracking the war.

“The Storm fighters are just sent to the most dangerous parts of the front, in defense and in attack,” the group told Reuters.

While Moscow has never acknowledged creating “Storm-Z” units, the first reports of their existence emerged in April when the Institute for the Study of War, a prominent US-based think tank, cited what it said appeared to be a leaked Russian military report on the formation of the squads.

President Vladimir Putin made reference to convicts fighting in the regular army on Friday, saying during a televised meeting with troops that he was aware that two of their comrades who were former inmates had been killed in action.

“They gave their lives for the motherland and have fully absolved themselves of their guilt,” said Putin, adding that the convicts’ families would be offered assistance.

Artyom Shchikin, a 29-year-old from the Mordovia region in central Russia, was serving a two-year sentence for robbery, when military recruiters came to his prison asking if inmates wanted to go and fight in Ukraine, according to court records and two of his relatives.

He signed up because, even though he was scheduled to be released in December, he wanted to wipe clean his criminal record and earn money for his family’s home renovations.

By May, Shchikin was assigned to a penal unit within the 291st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment and deployed to the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces are trying to punch through Russian defenses, the relatives added.

Shchikin’s relatives last heard from him on June 18. Days later, his unit’s positions came under Ukrainian fire. Three comrades who had been in a trench with him were killed, another had his hand torn off, while Shchikin himself is missing, the relatives said.

When the man’s family contacted the defense department seeking answers, their queries were largely ignored.

“They were from a Storm unit. For them, no one is going to be in a rush,” said one relative.

Unable to find answers about the fate of their loved ones through official channels, some families have turned to social media, posting photos of missing soldiers in a “Storm-Z” group on the Russian platform “V Kontakte” and asking those with information on their whereabouts to contact them.

Besides convicts seeking to win a pardon, “Storm-Z” units also include regular soldiers who have been pressed into the punishment squads for being drunk on duty, for doing drugs, or for refusing to carry out commanders’ orders, according to two servicemen.

Under Russian law on military discipline, a soldier can only be transferred to a penal unit if convicted by a military court. None of the people who spoke to Reuters said that the soldiers who had been sent to “Strom-Z” squads had appeared before a court hearing.

One group of about 20 “Storm-Z” fighters in Zaporizhzhia staged a revolt over the summer and released a video on June 28, saying that they refused to go back to the front because of the way they had been treated.

“On the frontline, where we’ve been, we did not get deliveries of ammunition. We did not get water or food. The injured were not taken away: still now the dead are rotting,” said a fighter in the video, which was published by Gulagu.net, a France-based Russian prisoners’ rights group.

“We’re given dreadful orders that are not even worth carrying out,” he added. “We refuse to continue carrying out combat missions,” the squad member lamented.

After the video’s release, Russian military police officers beat up members of the squad, but the conditions were said to have since improved, according to the relatives of two fighters.

Reuters was unable to determine how many soldiers in total are serving in the penal units — but Serhii Cherevaty, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Operational Command East, was quoted by The Telegraph as saying in June that there were more than 170,000 “Storm-Z” fighters in their “operational zone.”

With Post wires

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