Growing Dissatisfaction: Russia Sending Minority Soldiers To Riskiest War Zones In Ukraine

Russia's military command is sending personnel from ethnic minority backgrounds into the riskiest attacks, leading to growing dissatisfaction among the group, General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Facebook on Tuesday.

The General Staff wrote on the official page along with a YouTube video about the forced mobilization on the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The statement detailed the rotation of staff in several fronts, including the Belarusian-Ukrainian border.

The move to send non-ethnically Russian soldiers to regions most affected by missile strikes has led to the formation of several anti-war groups composed of Russian national minorities. However, these groups are mostly located outside of Russia, such as the Free Buryatia Foundation, according to the New Voice of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Tuesday's statement on Facebook also said Russian forces are continuing to reinforce security at the Ukrainian-Russian border on the Sivershchyna front where they are using mortars and artillery to fire on around Mykolaivka (Chernihiv Oblast) and Zarutske, Zhuravka, Bilopillia and Iskryvshchyna (Sumy Oblast).

Russian forces are also conducting combat operations on the Kharkiv front, while attempts are being made on the Sloviansk front to create favorable conditions for resuming an offensive on the city of Sloviansk.

At least 300 soldiers from a single unit in Russia’s North Caucasus refused to fight the war in Ukraine, The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported Tuesday. The men from the republic of Dagestan were deployed in the pro-Russian separatist region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine in the beginning of the invasion.

The ongoing war, which is nearing its sixth month, has seen thousands of casualties. The head of Britain's armed forces said Monday that Russia has lost some 50,000 killed or wounded soldiers and has witnessed 1,700 tanks being destroyed.

Russian occupiers launched an attack Tuesday in the center of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region with a P-37 cruise missile. The attack left one person dead and six other injured, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk Oblast Military Administration, said in a video shared on Facebook.

"The Russians are launching attacks on the Donetsk region more and more frequently, giving civilians no chance to save themselves," Kyrylenko said. "Therefore I am once again appealing to everyone who still remains in Donetsk Oblast and urging them to evacuate."