Among the many high-tech weapons in its arsenal, Russia also has mobile crematoriums in its possession that could follow invading forces and "evaporate" fallen soldiers, according to a report. The mobile crematoriums are built to disintegrate the bodies of slain soldiers and civilians, obscuring the true scale of the war. The news comes as Russian troops penetrated deep into Ukraine on Friday, heavily bombing the capital Kyiv.
For years, the crematoriums have been deployed alongside tanks and warplanes, and a video of them was released in 2013. According to the Telegraph, the British Ministry of Defense published a video of trucks that can incinerate bodies one at a time.
Putin's New Artillery
The British Ministry of Defense on Wednesday hinted that the Kremlin could use these mobile crematoriums in its war against Ukraine to hide the actually number of victims. The video shows trucks carrying those mobile crematoriums. The exterior of the trucks looks like regular vehicles, but they contain hidden incinerators.
"If I was a soldier and knew that my generals had so little faith in me that they followed me around the battlefield with a mobile crematorium, or I was the mother or father of a son, potentially deployed into a combat zone, and my government thought that the way to cover up losses was a mobile crematorium, I'd be deeply, deeply worried," UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told the Telegraph.
"It's a very chilling side effect of how the Russians view their forces," he said of the footage first posted back in 2013.
According to Western defense experts, they may be used to incinerate the bodies of soldiers in order to conceal the genuine combat dead toll.
Wallace stated on Wednesday that if Russia initiated a conflict, "we expect to see some of the things they've done previously." He was speaking ahead of Vladimir Putin's decision to begin a country-wide invasion of Ukraine.
The news comes as multiple media reports claims that Russia to has suffered immense loss on the first day of the war, with several of its soldiers already having been slayed in the hands of Ukrainian soldiers. Also, many have been held captive.
Mothers in Russia Protest
Understandably, not many know about Putin's war plans and strategies. Meanwhile, the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russian claims that many of Putin's young soldiers fighting in Ukraine were duped into enlisting and promised they'd be going to the border for practice drills before being pushed into a bloodbath.
The committee was founded in 1989 and is non-governmental. It released a statement on Thursday claiming that many of the young men who enlisted in the army were duped into doing so and then abused if they sought to leave.
"'We've had a flurry of calls from scared mothers all over Russia. They are crying, they don't know if their children are alive or healthy. If there is a war, then professionals should deal with it, not untrained green guys," Andrei Kurochkin, the deputy chairman of the group, told Russian site Takie Del, adding that it was a "complete catastrophe" to have soldiers fighting a war "under duress."
On Thursday, photos of several of the Russian soldiers were released after they were captured by Ukrainian forces. Many of the men appeared to be in their early twenties. Other chilling videos from Ukraine show tanks rolling past Chernobyl, while shelling echoes close to the Russian border in Sumy.
The committee is now prepared to submit an official complaint with the Office of the Chief Military Prosecutor.
