A group of coffins returned to a far eastern Russian city from the fighting in Eastern Ukraine. The coffins were marked as “Cargo 200” and best efforts were made by Russian officials to keep the funeral secret.
“The first 17 zinc coffins were returned to the city, which caused some shock among the local people,” stated a former Russian soldier who spoke on condition of anonymity to Crime.in.UA, who called the man in the city of Ussuriysk.
Information about where the deaths of the Russia soldiers took place was not released by Russian officials, who attempted to keep the funeral as secret as possible, according to the source.
However, the former Russian soldier said that the corpses appeared to be professional soldiers (“kontrakniki”) from the 14th Brigade of the GRU Spetsnaz Russian Federation (Special Forces of the Russian General Staff), although the source qualified that it was difficult to say with certainty from which military unit the soldiers had served.
The source said that the Russian corpses had been killed in one of the battles for the Donetsk airport in Eastern Ukraine.
The zinc coffins were returned to Ussuriysk, a city of 165,000 people located on an arm of Russian territory at the very eastern edge of Russia, surrounded by China, North Korea and the Sea of Japan. Around 500 Russian soldiers who had been based in Ussuriysk after 2012 had been flown to the Rostov oblast–“the West,” as locals referred to it–earlier this year.
“It was clear that Russian special forces operate at the [Donetsk] airport,” said the source, “but it really could not be confirmed. Now everything fits together.”
Fighting around Donetsk, particularly at the Donetsk airport continues despite the Sept. 5 peace agreement. Russia sent an eighth convoy of 39 unauthorized, uninspected vehicles to refortify its fighters in Eastern Ukraine with food, fuel, weapons and ammunition Nov. 30.
By James Haleavy