Russia’s Belgorod region: three conscripts killed, seven injured in shelling

Three Russian conscripts from the Yekaterinburg region who were undergoing the compulsory military service have been killed and seven injured in the Belgorod region of the country, as per the Yekaterinburg region Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Merzlyakova.

“The boys were undergoing training. A guided projectile hit a bus with the conscript soldiers inside — three of the guys were killed, seven were injured, two of them are in critical condition,” she said in a statement.

According to Merzlyakova, all the conscripts who came under fire had previously served in the railway military unit in the city of Yekaterinburg. They were sent to the Belgorod region at the end of April. She named one of the killed soldiers — resident of the town of Krasnoturinsk Kirill Maksakov.

“Of course, it’s concerning that the boys somehow ended up coming under fire,” Merzlyakova stated. She added to have reached out to First Deputy Minister of Defence Valery Gerasimov with a request to transfer the conscripts from the Belgorod region.

Earlier today, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu reported 71 Russian servicemen had been killed and 210 wounded while repelling the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The last time the Russian Defence Ministry reported on its losses in Ukraine was on 21 September 2022. Back then, the ministry claimed that 5,937 Russian servicemen had been killed since the start of the war.

At the end of May 2023, journalists for BBC Russians News and Mediazona confirmed the deaths of over 24,000 Russian servicemen in the Ukraine war, using open source data. They noted that the list compiled by them did not include many names, saying that the real number of those killed in the war in Ukraine could be twice as high, or higher.

In April 2022, Russia’s Defence Ministry confirmed that Russian cruiser Moskva had sunk in the Black Sea, with conscripts onboard. According to the official statements, one crew member had been killed and 27 gone MIA. However, the relatives of at least five conscripts present on the cruiser were issued certificates of their death. In November, a Sevastopol court declared 17 sailors from the sunken cruiser officially dead.