Russian soldiers ask for help when their own army throws them into a pit

Russian deserters are locked up with metal grilles in medieval pits.

desperate and injured Russian soldiers said they were thrown in pits that food and water had been denied them because they refused to fight or drank a lot.

"We are in the mud, in the rain, we are all wet. The faces of my colleagues were smashed," said a Russian soldier named Pavel Gorelov, who was part of the 99th regiment, in a leaked video. "We only drank a little beer."

In the video, several men sit in the Russian military in combat uniforms on the hard ground of the pit. Rainwater drips in. Several of the men seem to be seriously injured, with bloody cuts over their swollen faces and black eyes. A man smokes a cigarette, but is hardly coherent.

"I ask the Attorney General for help," says Mr. Gorelov in the video. "You have seen these conditions now."

In another video, another Russian soldier complains, possibly from the same unit that was captured in a opencast mine.

Flarit Baitemirov says that he was a voluntary soldier from Saratov in southern Russia and has been held in the pit since the end of March.

"I am kept from my own side, the Russians. I'm Russian," he said

open pits called Zindans with grills were used in Central Asia to keep prisoners and were often used by imperial Russian armies. They were known for being overcrowded and plagued by diseases. Exposed to the elements, prisoners used to be crazy when they could take a look at the outside world through the grill.

Russian soldiers have been complaining for months that the military police thrash them into crowded caves or pits without food and water when they refuse to fight.

It is difficult to know exactly how many Russian soldiers do every day or desert, but analysts said that they are probably hundreds.

Russian military tactics have not developed since the Second World War and is based on sending waves from infantrymen via open terrain against Ukrainian machine guns and trenches.

The high number of victims caused by these tactics spread fear and dissatisfaction within the Russian army.

Desperate Russian soldiers have published dozens of videos this year, in which they ask high -ranking commanders to save them from chaos, death and destruction on the front. Many of the people in the videos say that they have no choice but to do.