All four men told us in graphic detail about the dreaded meat storm missions – part of the Russian military’s wider “meat grinder” tactic on the Ukrainian battlefields.<\/p>\n
The storms are so deadly, they are likened to suicide missions.<\/p>\n
“I saw them [commanders] send wave after wave, throwing men like meat at the Ukrainians, so they run out of ammo and drones and another wave can reach their objective,” says another former soldier, Denis.<\/p>\n
Every day in 2025, an estimated 900-1,500 Russians were killed or wounded in Ukraine, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.<\/p>\n
Dima explains how the storms work in practice.<\/p>\n
“You send three guys, then another three. It didn’t work out, send 10. It didn’t work out with 10, send 50,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Eventually you will break through. That’s the logic of the military.<\/p>\n
“We had 200 dead in three days. On our regiment’s first meat storm they broke us, our regiment was destroyed in just three days,” he says.<\/p>\n
Dima then shows a video, uploaded to social media in October 2023, of mothers and wives of men killed in his unit speaking out against the huge losses.<\/p>\n
One woman can be heard saying: “Our men were ordered to advance armed with only machine guns and shovels.” Another says: “There are terrible losses. Our men are being slaughtered.”<\/p>\n
Those who are not killed for refusing a storm often face dire and dehumanising consequences, Ilya says.<\/p>\n
He shows a video on Telegram of men from his unit in Panteleimonivka in Donetsk.<\/p>\n
“Let’s feed the animals,” a man says, before pulling up a lid to show three men crouching in a pit.<\/p>\n
“Oh, are you hungry? You want to be fed?” the man filming asks, before one of the men raises his head and nods, holding out his hands while some dry grains are poured into the pit.<\/p>\n
“Look how it’s eating,” the man filming says, as the man in the pit eats the grain.<\/p>\n
Some men would be “starved for days” and electrocuted, says Ilya, before being sent into meat storms unarmed.<\/p>\n
He personally was tortured, he says, after refusing to take part in one storm.<\/p>\n
“They tied me to a tree, hit me with a baton a couple of times and put a gun to my head.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know how to put it, they went to the toilet on me. The commander told everyone ‘We’ve got a new toilet’. I was tied up for half a day.”<\/p>\n
After being untied, Ilya attempted to take his own life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All four men told us in graphic detail about the dreaded meat storm missions – part of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-442635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}