A military plane has carried 120 dead Russian soldiers 5,000 miles home after losing their lives in Putin’s war in Ukraine.
They were flown a transit point at Rostov-on-Don, close to Ukraine, to Russia’s largest island Sakhalin, in the Pacific. A total of 120 coffins are in the New Year military plane to remote Sakhalin, off north Japan. It means the total officially-declared war dead in Sakhalin region is 515.
Video footage from inside the aircraft was filmed by a shocked trooper, whose job it was to escort the coffins. He can be heard giving commentary as he films. He said: “Just so you guys understand, there are [more than] 130 people on our plane. Twelve escorts and 120 people in boxes. Just so you understand, these are coffins. There are dead people lying there [killed in the war against Ukraine].”
Putin has sent a disproportionate number of fighters to war from far-flung Russian regions, rather than major cities like Moscow and St Petersburg. The population of the island – slightly smaller than Scotland – is around 460,000 so the 500-plus toll highlights the scale of the loss.
The flights are becoming a regular occurrence but Russia takes strenuous measures not to show them to the public fearing a loss of morale. Some estimates that Russia has seen 200,000 killed and 550,000 wounded in the conflict. The Pentagon in October put the overall toll of dead and wounded at more than 600,000.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Tensions have centred around the status of Crimea and parts of the Donbas. — both are internationally recognised as part of Ukraine.
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