"They're just meat": Reuters speaks with convicts from Russian Storm-Z units

Reuters has published an investigation into Russian Storm-Z units, where regular Russian soldiers are sent as a punishment.

Source: Reuters, citing 13 sources, including 5 Storm-Z soldiers, relatives of soldiers from these units, and servicemen from other units of the Russian army

Details: Reuters stressed that they had verified the identities of all the soldiers they talked to, using criminal records and social media accounts or talking with their colleagues and families.

One punitive detachment, Reuters says, has about 100-150 people and is part of regular army units. They are usually sent to "the most exposed parts of the front".

According to Reuters’ sources, there are at least several hundred Storm-Z soldiers who are currently at the front.

Three soldiers from the detachment said that they were offered a salary of about RUB 200,000 (about US$2,000) a month, although, according to them, on average they received about half of that amount.

The attitude towards them from other units is not the best. A Russian conscript who was near Bakhmut in May and June told Reuters that he provided medical assistance to a group of six or seven wounded Storm-Z fighters, disobeying his commander’s order to leave them.

He described this as a typical example of the attitude of the Russian military towards soldiers from these units, saying "storm fighters, they’re just meat".

The penal squads primarily consist of convicts, although some regular soldiers have been sent there as punishment for disobeying orders.

Russian legislation on military discipline states that a soldier can only be sent to prison after being found guilty by a military court. None of the sources who informed Reuters that soldiers had been dispatched to Storm-Z mentioned that the men had taken part in a court proceeding.

The news agency emphasises that the issue of soldiers being punished by their own side is not covered by the Geneva Convention, a set of international laws of war.

Reuters also identified 2 of about 20 Storm-Z soldiers in Zaporizhzhia Oblast who refused to return to the front and recorded a video on 28 June complaining of poor treatment.

One of the fighters in the video said that they "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,"

Military police officers beat up two of the fighters and other members of their squad as retaliation for their uprising after the video was released, relatives of the two soldiers said.

Since then, they said, the two fighters had informed them that conditions had improved, but they were unsure of the exact date when the men would be able to leave the military.

Quote from Reuters: "There is historical precedent for military offenders being pressed into fighting units; in 1942, when the Red Army was retreating from a Nazi advance, Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered soldiers who panicked or left their posts into ‘punishment battalions’ deployed to the most dangerous parts of the front, according to a decree he signed."

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