Ukrainian platoon stranded at front for months calls for help

KYIV - A group of Ukrainian soldiers has appealed to the military leadership for help, saying they had spent more than four months without rotation on the frontline, surviving days without food or water.

Several servicemen from the 121st Territorial Defence Brigade appear gaunt and exhausted in a video published on Aug 11 that quickly spread across social media and was addressed directly to army chief Mykhailo Drapaty.

“We are now staying in a shelter we found ourselves, because all the positions have been destroyed. There has been no provision of food or drinking water for periods of three to seven days,” platoon commander Anatoliy Saichuk said in the video.

On one occasion, he said, the unit went 12 days without water: “We drank our own urine and waited for at least something to be dropped to us.”

The platoon had been deployed on what was supposed to be a one-month mission, with supplies delivered by drone, he added.

“But as it turned out, that was not the case,” Saichuk said, accusing senior officers of lying to soldiers’ families by assuring them the men were “fully supplied”.

“Some of my servicemen were semi-conscious for several days due to lack of water and food,” he added, saying he eventually decided to abandon the positions when circumstances allowed.

The 121st Brigade command confirmed the video’s authenticity on Facebook and said it “continues to take all necessary measures to properly supply the servicemen” in what it described as “extremely difficult” battlefield conditions.

The “South” joint forces group, which commands the area, said the platoon was fighting in a “difficult and dynamic sector of the front”, adding the video showed only “an isolated fragment of a complex operational environment” that did not capture the full extent of efforts being made.

Critically short of manpower, Ukraine’s army has for years been unable to rotate its troops on the frontline regularly.

The overload of combat zones with drones has also made resupplying soldiers increasingly difficult.

Similar cases, sometimes involving soldiers becoming emaciated from lack of food, have come to light in the past. AFP