Thousands of Russian corpses ‘transported under cover of night to mask true death toll’

THE bodies of more than 2,500 Russian soldiers have been transported to Belarus at night to disguise the number of casualties in Ukraine, Belarusian doctors have reported.

Residents in Homel, a region in south-eastern Belarus less than 150 miles north of Kyiv, have told of hospital wards crammed full of “terribly disfigured” soldiers and morgues overflowing with corpses, as Russia quietly transports its wounded and dead across the border.

One hospital doctor in Homel told Radio Free Europe that, by March 13, more than 2,500 bodies had been shipped by train or plane back to Russia from the region. The Sunday Telegraph has been unable to verify the figure.

Another medic in Mazyr, a town home to 100,000 people, added that efforts to transport bodies to Russia were increasingly taking place in darkness to minimise scrutiny. “Earlier, the corpses were transported by ambulances and loaded on Russian trains,” the doctor said. “After someone made a video, and it went on the internet, the bodies were loaded at night so as not to attract attention.”

Establishing the exact toll of the war has proved impossible, with the two sides producing widely differing estimates of military fatalities.

Russia acknowledged on March 2 that nearly 500 soldiers had died and 1,597 injured. US intelligence last week put the figure at 7,000 while Ukraine claims 14,000 Russians have died.

Belarus’ Homel region may offer some clues about the real toll. Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the country’s strongman leader, is a close ally of Vladimir Putin – and yesterday insisted that the Russian president was “a sane, healthy person”.

“He will catch cold many times at our funerals. He is a completely normal and reasonable person,” he told a Japanese television channel. “The West better throw this hoax out of their heads … All of that talk is to undermine trust in [the] president inside Russia.”

Thousands of Russian troops have crossed the border in a push to Kyiv – but the advance has been slow and the losses substantial. Now residents are reporting an influx of bodies in “black sacks”, with Mazyr’s only morgue said to have been overflowing by March 3.

In the town, there have been reports of a surge of injured Russian soldiers arriving in need of medical attention. “There are a lot of deaths. Limbs are being cut off and there are a lot of shrapnel wounds,” a human rights worker in Mazyr said. “All these are mostly very young guys born in 1998-2002.”

The number of patients has reportedly triggered a shortage of surgeons, with locals being discharged to make space. There are also fears that there may soon be a shortage of everyday medications for the general population.

“There are so many wounded Russians there – it’s a horror,” one resident told Radio Free Europe. “[They’re] terribly disfigured. It is impossible to listen to their moans throughout the whole hospital.”

But the picture is unclear as medics have been ordered not to discuss the situation – underlining how desperate officials are to stop casualty numbers reaching the Russian public.

“Those who could have said something were fired or quit,” the human rights worker said. “Those who have remained are forbidden to take their phones to work. There is total control.”

‘After someone made a video, and it went on the internet, the bodies were loaded at night to not attract attention’