The Moscow Times reported on 300 soldiers from Dagestan who refused to fight. Some of them returned home with frostbite

In March, 300 servicemen from unit 63354, which is located in Buinaksk, voluntarily laid down their arms and, without waiting for dismissal, left Ukraine. This was reported by The Moscow Times, citing two human rights activists.

“If a serviceman is absent from his place of service for more than 10 days, then criminal liability may be applied to him, and the military prosecutor’s office is currently looking into the case,” an unnamed military lawyer from Moscow, who was contacted by the contract soldiers, told the publication.

The soldiers were in the area of ​​the self-proclaimed DPR. They claimed that they had problems with uniforms and weapons. According to one human rights activist, some soldiers returned to Dagestan with frostbitten limbs and had to "cut off the blackened flesh."

In Buinaksk, the servicemen were greeted as deserters. After their return, a meeting was held in the city with the participation of their relatives, local authorities, military personnel and the prosecutor's office, one of the human rights activists said.

"I looked into the eyes of everyone who said that they should be pitied. Mothers cried, said that their sons were freezing, that they couldn't wash themselves properly. And I said: do you think it was good in the trenches during the Great Patriotic War?" said one of the city residents who was present at the meeting.

As a result, some of the returning soldiers resigned, and some “under pressure from relatives and local authorities” returned to Ukraine, The Moscow Times writes. The publication was unable to speak with the soldiers themselves.

• Last week, the head of the Free Buryatia Foundation, Alexandra Garmazhapova, reported that 150 Buryat servicemen who refused to fight and terminated their contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry returned from Ukraine.
• Later, Garmazhapova gave Mediazona an audio recording in which seven contract soldiers from Buryatia stated that they had been threatened after refusing to fight. According to one of the soldiers, the "refuseniks" were sent to a pretrial detention center near Lugansk.
• Earlier, Russian media reported that National Guard members from Krasnodar , Khakassia , Kabardino-Balkaria , as well as servicemen from Pskov , refused to fight in Ukraine.