Russia is so desperate for soldiers that it is press-ganging women convicts in occupied regions of Ukraine into joining the Russian army, the Ukrainian military has said.
The intelligence tip-off confirms reports in January that the Russian army was pressuring thousands of Ukrainian convicts in areas it occupies to sign up to fight.
“Throughout the week, the occupiers recruited about 50 people from the women's correctional colony in the city of Snizhne in the temporarily occupied territory of Donetsk region,” said the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
It comes after the UK Ministry of Defence suggested that Russia was running out of soldiers to use in so-called "human wave attacks" as recruitment from Russian prisons slows.
Women do not usually fight in front line combat roles in the Russian army.
Wives of fallen Ukrainian soldiers create Facebook support group
The wives of fallen Ukrainian soldiers have set up a Facebook support group, talking about their struggle to cope with grief and to find sufficient support from the community as the war continues.Two women who created the group spoke to Current Time TV, a Russian-language television channel funded by the US government.Oksana said she had retreated to the home she and her husband built together as a “fortress” against the outside world, using painting as a form of relief, while Tetiana said “the pain will not disappear… It is with us for life”.
Ukraine promises not to strike Russian territory with new long-range weapons
Ukraine will not use longer-range weapons pledged by the United States to hit Russian territory and will only target Russian units in occupied Ukrainian territory, Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Sunday.The United States confirmed on Friday that a new rocket that would double Ukraine's strike range was included in a $2 billion military aid package to help Kyiv fight back Russian forces."We always tell our partners officially that we will not use weapons supplied by foreign partners to fire on Russian territory. We only fire on Russian units on temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory," Mr Reznikov told reporters.In an interview published on Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also said there was an agreement with President Zelensky that weapons supplied by the West must only be used on Ukrainian territory."We have a consensus on that," he said.