All five recently killed Chelyabinsk men were sent to the front without combat training

The five Chelyabinsk-region conscripts killed almost immediately after mobilization, were sent to the front without combat training of any kind. BBC News Russian reported this, citing the friends and relatives of the men recently acknowledged dead.

On October 13, Chelyabinsk authorities reported that the five men mobilized from the city’s Korkinsky District died in the “Donbas zone of the special military operation.” This is the first instance of local officials acknowledging the death of their mobilized residents.

Three of these men have been identified by BBC News Russian. Anton Borisov, Igor Yevseyev, and Timur Akhmetshin were drafted between September 26 and September 29. By October 3, they were near Luhansk. Later, they were taken to the annexed Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine. On October 9, the first death notice was delivered to one of their homes.

The journalists have obtained a recorded phone conversation between another Chelyabinsk conscript, who was wounded and hospitalized in Sevastopol, and his acquaintance, who was just getting ready to go to the front. On the record, the first speaker described the circumstances under which the five other Chelyabinsk conscripts were killed in action.

We got there the first day, having never fired a shot — and they sent us, like meat, straight to an assault unit, with two grenade launchers. I had at least read the instructions on how to use them. On the third day we retreated, rested a night, then went ahead and took our positions in the trenches.

In another recorded conversation obtained by the BBC, one more conscript from the Korkinsky District says that Timur Akhmetshin was killed on October 7, when the Russian side launched an offensive.

All the Russian wounded were taken by helicopters from Nova Kakhovka to Sevastopol. Among them were Dmitry Menshenin, Raul Ishmuratov, Maxim Molchanov, and Denis Amosov. Their friends say that the wounded soldiers were promised transfer from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk.

The bodies of the troops killed in action will be delivered to Chelyabinsk on October 14–15.

• The news agency Agentstvo has calculated that no fewer than ten Russian men conscripted since the start of the mobilization have been killed.
• Chelyabinsk is the only region whose local authorities have officially acknowledged their war dead.

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