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Putin’s troops are using piles of their dead comrades as improvised walls to shield them from Ukrainian bullets on the frontline where there are ‘fields’ of rotting corpses, Ukrainian general reveals

• Ukraine military intelligence boss Kyrylo Budanov visited frontline in Bakhmut
• He said he saw Russian soldiers there using walls of bodies to defend themselves
• He also insisted Ukraine would not give up an inch of territory to Russian forces
• Budanov predicts fiercest fighting will come in March before big push in spring
By Laurence Dollimore For Mailonline
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11599679/Putins-troops-using-piles-dead-comrades-shield-Ukrainian-bullets.html?ito=push-notification&ci=MGk5YA4112&cri=vLPmDtmK9R&si=qUE_cMbMuf0Y&xi=90d65f60-88f8-4565-8362-1a61ff1c99fe&ai=11599679

Vladimir Putin’s troops are piling up the bodies of their dead comrades in a bid to shield themselves from Ukrainian bullets, it has been claimed.

The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said he witnessed the shocking scenes during a visit to Bakhmut in Donetsk in late December, one of the fiercest battle zones along the 800-mile frontline in the war against Russia.

He also insisted Ukraine would not give up an inch of territory and said Russia’s failure to win the war after almost a year proved the country ‘is not a threat to the world anymore’, branding its military might a ‘tell tale.’

However he predicts the war will drag on for some months at least, with the fiercest fighting expected to take place in March as Ukraine plots a big push in the spring.

Speaking of his public appearance in Bakhmut, he told ABC News: ‘Soldiers showed me a section where dead bodies are piled up like something you would see in a movie.

‘There are hundreds of dead bodies just rotting away in the open field, in places they are piled on top of other bodies like makeshift walls, when Russian troops attack on that field they use those bodies for cover, like a shield.

‘But it’s not working. There are actual fields of dead bodies there.’

Budanov claimed Putin’s weapons stash is running low, meaning they had to seek out ‘cheaper’ and more ‘plentiful’ options.

Among these are the alleged Iranian self-destructing Shahed drones - although Iran has denied selling Russia hundreds of the deadly weapons.

It comes after Russia attempted to inflict mass casualties with 84 drones on January 1 and 2, all of which were neutralised by Ukraine’s air defences.

Budanov said he foresees the ‘hottest’ fighting in March and the spring, when he believes there will be more liberation of territories that will ‘deal the final defeats to the Russian Federation... from Crimea to the Donbas.’

He vowed to return the Ukrainian borders to those of 1991 and said the West must not fear ‘the transformation of Russia’, saying it would ‘only benefit the whole world.’

Budanov branded Putin’s regime a ‘laughingstock’ and said his troops have been reduced to defending the territories that they still hold in Ukraine.

‘Russia is not a military threat to the world anymore, just a tall tale,’ he added.

He admitted that Russia’s mammoth nuclear weapons arsenal was a concern, calling for the country’s denuclearisation or ‘at least an international overseeing’ of its nukes.

It comes after Russia yesterday blamed its soldiers illegally using their mobile phones for giving away their location before a deadly Ukrainian strike killed ‘hundreds’ of their troops at a military college.

The Kremlin raised the death toll from the New Year’s Day strike in Makiivka from 63 to 89, the highest acknowledged loss in the war, although Ukraine says the true number is around 400 dead.

The Russian defence ministry said four Ukrainian HIMARS missiles hit a temporary Russian barracks in a vocational college in Makiivka, twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

At the time of the attack, Vladimir Putin had just delivered his traditional New Year’s address, hailing ‘our heroes’ fighting in Ukraine.

Although an official probe has been launched, the main reason for the attack was clearly the illegal mass use of mobile phones by servicemen, the ministry said.

‘This factor allowed the enemy to track and determine the coordinates of the soldiers’ location for a missile strike,’ it said in a statement issued just after 1 a.m. (2200 GMT Tuesday) on Wednesday.

However, Semyon Pegov, a prominent Russian war correspondent awarded the Order of Courage by Putin in late 2022, questioned the ministry’s reasoning.

In a Telegram post, Pegov said that Ukraine could have been able to locate the troops via drones and intelligence, not necessarily through mobile phones.

‘The story of mobiles is not very convincing,’ Pegov said.

‘I rarely say this - but this is the case when it would probably be better to remain silent, at least until the end of the investigation. As such it looks like an outright attempt to smear the blame.’

Rubble is strewn across the ground in Russian-occupied Makiivka, in the eastern Donbas region, in the aftermath of the strike. The missiles hit a vocational school which had been turned into a barracks for Russian forces

Russia has admitted 63 soldiers were killed in the strike, although Ukraine’s military has said this number is far higher

Pegov also said that the number of casualties would rise.
‘Unfortunately, their number will continue to grow.

The announced data is most likely for those who were immediately identified. The list of the missing, unfortunately, is noticeably longer. I cannot disclose the sources, but I consider them reliable.’

The ministry’s reaction came amid mounting anger among some Russian commentators, who are increasingly vocal about what they see as a half-hearted campaign in Ukraine.

Most of the anger on social media was directed at military commanders rather than Putin, who has not commented publicly on the attack which was another blow after major battlefield retreats in recent months.

Volodymyr Zelensky, who rarely comments on specific Ukrainian military strikes, made no mention of the attack in a video address on Tuesday.