Military conscripts in the Russian-backed Donbas region have been sent into front-line combat against Ukrainian troops with no training, little food and water, and inadequate weapons, six people in the separatist province said.
The new accounts of untrained and ill-equipped conscripts being deployed are a fresh indication of how stretched the military resources at the Kremlin's disposal are, over a month into a war that has seen Moscow's forces hobbled by logistical problems and held up by fierce Ukrainian resistance.
One of the people, a student conscripted in late February, said a fellow fighter told him to prepare to repel a close-quarter attack by Ukrainian forces in southwest Donbas but "I don't even know how to fire an automatic weapon."