Thrown naked into a pit for defying Putin’s orders: Russian soldiers suffer brutal punishment until they pay £4,000 bribe if they refuse to embark on suicide missions against Ukrainian artillery

Russian soldiers are thrown naked into a well when they refuse to carry out suicide missions against Ukrainian artillery, it has been revealed.

The mobilized men are suffering a brutal punishment for disobeying Vladimir Putin’s orders – and are not allowed to leave the pit until they have paid a £4,000 bribe, the wife of one of the soldiers said.

Video shows the Russian soldiers standing half-naked in the deep pit while looking at the ground: their punishment for refusing to fight Ukrainian soldiers without proper military equipment and food.

The five soldiers in the video spent four nights in the pit – and will only be allowed to leave if they pay a £4,000 bribe, said Olga Belanovskaya, whose husband Maxim, 28, is on the front line.

If they do not pay the large amount, the soldiers are ‘liquidated’ and ‘buried in the pit’.

Olga, who has no idea if Maxim is still alive, also revealed that the soldiers have been forced to pay a £1,785 bribe if they want to go on leave. Otherwise, they will never leave the front lines, where they will be sent to a “meat grinder” of Ukrainian machine gun nests.

She said the soldiers are given the “shortest possible time” to dig the trenches – and only once they are done are they given food and water.

Olga flew seven time zones across Russia to reach Moscow with a ‘collective appeal’ to Putin’s authorities to allow mobilized men to come home amid the disgusting conditions on the front lines.

She said: ‘I came (to Moscow) with a personal appeal to President Putin’s government, the Ministry of Defense and other authorities.

“Our young men are in holes dug in the ground. They are forced to undress and can only leave if they pay a bribe of 400,000 rubles (€3,575).

“They are sent to these holes because they refuse to attack without the proper equipment, after being ordered to go against artillery, tanks and mortars with only machine guns.

‘To take a break, soldiers must pay 200,000 rubles (£1,785).

“They are given the shortest possible time to dig trenches, and only then are the soldiers given a bottle of water and some basic food – until then there is no food.”

Olga said the wounded soldiers are not spared the terrible treatment.

“Even the wounded who are kept in a cellar are not fed, in other words, they kill them (the wounded soldiers).

“Wounded soldiers, even those on crutches and wheelchairs, are sent back to the front.”

When they try to get a medical exemption, “they get turned down.”

Olga is part of a growing number of women in Russia expressing their anger over Putin’s war.

It comes as Putin has ordered the gagging of women demonstrating against his war.

He is concerned that the increasing number of protests now underway by wives and mothers of forcibly mobilized men will damage his planned re-election campaign in March.

Putin is well aware that a mother-led uprising led to the end of the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan in 1979 and hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Its regional officials and secret services have been ordered to root out anti-war views at all costs, reports say.

At a recent protest, a female anti-war activist declared, “Putin spits in your face.”

She expressed her outrage that the dictator is releasing and pardoning thousands of murderers and rapists who served six months in his war, while condemning ordinary law-abiding mobilized men to remain at the front as cannon fodder until the end of the war, and locks them up. who complain.

Another protest was followed by an unprecedented petition from 100,000 women calling for mobilized men to come home.

Now it is revealed that regional governors have been ordered to crack down on protests, now taking place nationwide at the highest level in the nearly 21-month war, as anger grows over his dictatorial methods.

A source in the regional government told The Insider: ‘The task is to stop external (street) protests at all costs.

‘Convince, promise, pay.

‘Anything, as long as it doesn’t go onto the streets, in any quantity, not even fifty people.’

The order was given to regional officials by Putin’s presidential administration, the source said.

Protest organizers have been approached by the feared FSC security service and threatened with sanctions if they continue with demonstrations that, authorities worry, could spiral out of control.

There have been limited protests recently in Moscow, Novosibirsk and Khabarovsk, among others, but many have been banned.

Authorities in St. Petersburg used anti-Covid restrictions to ban a gathering.

Mass events are banned in Putin’s home city for the rest of the year.

Olga Tsukanova, 47, founder of the Council of Wives and Mothers, has been included in the register of ‘foreign agents’ and faces repression as criminal charges are brought against her.

An anti-war protester, beautician Olga Kats, has vowed to challenge Putin after he flatly rejected her petition, signed by 100,000 women, to allow mobilized men to come home.

She started her campaign because she wants her brother Aleksander, 26, back after more than a year on the front lines.

“We are trying to establish a maximum service period for mobilization,” she said.

“It is high time to bring home the civilian men who fell under partial mobilization.”

“The presidential administration has simply decided not to care about the efforts of 100,000 people,” she said.

She was told that the men would not return home until “the end of hostilities.”

An image shows her and other women demanding that the mobilized troops be allowed to go home.

“The only one whose words we will believe is Putin,” she said after being approached by his government in a failed attempt to silence her.

“And I said we need to hear these words before New Year’s.”

Until now, many Russians have felt too intimidated by Putin’s police state to protest, but it appears many more are doing so as the death toll in the conflict soars.

But in Moscow, in the shadow of the Kremlin, women took to the streets with signs reading “Give the children back their fathers,” “It’s time for the mobilized to go home,” and “Justice is demobilization for the mobilized.”

One of the women – named Inna – said: ‘The children ask where their father is, when he will return, and we have no answers.

“We’re just living in hell.”

In Khabarovsk, a protest leader railed against police who wanted to control a demonstration of mainly women.

‘You should be ashamed! Shame! Shame! Shame on the police,” she said. ‘Scandalous! Stop arresting the protesters!’