Footage from Russia has shown countless coffins carrying the war dead sent into Ukraine by Vladimir Putin.
The coffins are seen piled up in a yard in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. According to reports, the dead soldiers’ bodies are waiting there before they are transported to their families back in Russia.
The footage is said to have been captured by a Russian military officer working at the yard.
Images such as these are not normally seen after Vladimir Putin imposed new laws making it illegal to “discredit” Russian armed forces or distribute “false information” about the war.
Independent journalist Alexander Nevzorov tried to raise awareness of the chilling footage.
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He said: “The approaches to Avdiivka have long become a huge mass grave of [Putin’s fighters]. But now the Russians are covering the area with a new carpet of their corpses.”
Fighting in Ukraine has been centered around the town of Avdiivka for months now, but Mr Nevzorov says there is no military reason for Putin wanting to “liberate” the region.
He continued: “At all polling stations, ballot boxes must bow before the crazy king of corpses…The fights are crazy.
“Orcs [Russian fighters] climb over the corpses of their comrades, ‘forward to the victory of Putinism’.”
Mr Nevzorov added: “The counting of losses has stopped. There are so many corpses that it has lost all meaning.”
Other footage has shown an An-124 Ruslan plane purportedly landing at Neryungri Airport in Yakutia carrying more dead Russian soldiers.
The man in the video is heard saying: “They are all our boys from Yakutsk, 26 men. We’ve loaded two trucks, mine and Tolik’s. Sixteen other bodies have already been taken. And another nine [coffins] were loaded into a Kamaz truck.
“We are now to transport [the coffins] to the railway to load the boys into train carriages.”
