In war-torn Ukraine, the corpses of Vladimir Putin’s fallen servicemen are routinely loaded onto a refrigerated train, the polskatimes.pl website reported.
Morgue workers report that the pockets of Russian soldiers often contain handfuls of gold, in all likelihood stolen from Ukrainian civilians, according to polskatimes.pl.
Gold in the pockets
Ukrainian army officials showed one such refrigerated carriage to reporters from the Qatari Al-Jazeera English TV channel, polskatimes.pl reported.
On opening some of the dozens of white body bags, they produced fistfuls of jewellery from the uniforms of the dead men, according to the Polish website.
It is believed that Russian troops stole the valuables, which include gold rings and necklaces, from Ukraine’s civilian population, polskatimes.pl said.
War crimes
Looting by Putin’s invading army has been well documented, polskatimes.pl reported.
Moreover, prosecutors, both local and international, are probing hundreds of other possible war crimes committed by Russian troops, including mass killings, torture and rape, the website said.
Col. Volodymir Liamzin from the Ukrainian Army told Al-Jazeera that the bodies in the train “will be kept as long as need be,” adding that Ukraine intended "to treat the Russian dead better than they treated Ukrainian civilians."
Liamzin said the government in Kyiv "will decide” what to do with the bodies “because the Russians refuse to take them,” polskatimes.pl reported.
According to Ukrainian military authorities, Russia has lost nearly 27,000 soldiers since it invaded Poland’s eastern neighbour in February.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin maintains that around 1,300 of its troops have been killed in Ukraine, according to polskatimes.pl.
Friday is day 79 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: polskatimes.pl, ukrinform.net, dailymail.co.uk