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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.