Concerns about the morale of reservists called up to fight in Ukraine have hampered Vladimir Putin’s mobilization since it was announced last month.
Some Russian soldiers appear to be on the verge of mutiny as the army struggles to house and train hundreds of thousands of men.
In the first major sign of protest among the mobilized, hundreds of soldiers gathered at a railway line in the southwestern Belgorod region, saying they were being sent to Ukraine without any training.
A video shot by the soldiers appeared on a Russian ultra-nationalist social media page on Thursday.
“There’s about 500 of us here,” said the soldier behind the camera, who did not identify himself.
“We have weapons, but we are not part of any unit,” he said. “Nobody knows where we’re going. We have been living like cattle for over a week – we have not been offered equipment or money.’
Several men in the crowd, wearing balaclavas, said their officers treated them “like cattle”.
The Russian Defense Ministry declined to comment on the video, but an unnamed official from Russia’s Western Military District told the RIA Novosti news agency that the soldiers were not going to Ukraine, but to a training center in southern Russia.
“hanging out and drinking”
Earlier this week, another mobilized soldier was reported to have died before reaching Ukraine.
Alexander Koltun’s mother told local media that her son died at a training camp outside Novosibirsk in Siberia on Sunday, four days after being drafted.
Elena Zausaeva dismissed reports that her son died of alcohol poisoning, saying he was a sober father of six children.
Before he died, he told his mother that the conscripts did not receive any rations and mostly “hang out and drink.”
Hundreds of thousands of Russian men have fled the country to escape the mobilization, but Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, on Thursday sought to play down the exodus.
Responding to Russian media reports claiming 700,000 Russian men have fled the country in recent days, Mr Peskov told reporters he did not know the exact figures but was confident they were “very far ” of those reported.
Kazakhstan and Georgia together reported 300,000 Russians crossing the border in less than two weeks.
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