The 28th night of the war – and the news from Ukraine is not getting any better: fierce fighting is still raging on the front sections in the south-east of the country (especially around Mariupol). In the north of Kiev, the Ukrainian armed forces are said to have managed small, successful counterattacks.
The high number of casualties suffered by the Russian army – analysts speak of up to 14,000 dead – are now creating another problem in Ukraine: the dead are decomposing in the fields, in ditches and in ruins, and many of the dead are not recovered by the Russian army.
This procedure of forgetting one’s own dead on the battlefield is unworthy of a European civilized nation, even in the most cruel warfare. And in addition to this obvious callousness towards one’s own soldiers who died in Vladimir Putin’s “special operation”, there is another major problem: the dead contaminate the groundwater, poison the soil.
Anatoly Kotlyar, the director of health services in the Sumy region, now warns: “Russian troops have still not picked up their dead soldiers. We don’t need them, but they just leave them with us.”
The Ukrainian health expert also tells media that the government has now ordered extra refrigeration equipment to keep the dead Russians in warehouses without causing more damage from cadaveric poisons. However, these cooling devices are still on their way to the region.
Images of body bags are also used by the Ukrainian media to show that the Kremlin does not have its dead picked up. For the relatives of these young fallen soldiers, this action by the Russian armed forces command is an additional pain to the tremendous loss of the beloved son or husband.
