Russia Soldier Rues Avdiivka Losses in Video: '75 of Us Came...Now 14 Left'

A Russian soldier has lamented the losses among his comrades in the battle for Avdiivka during a video that has gone viral.

Russian forces launched a push for the town in the Donetsk oblast, which is the gateway to the Moscow-occupied city of Donetsk, in October.

After throwing thousands of troops and large numbers of equipment into the area, Moscow's forces have suffered some of its highest casualty rates this year, according to western estimates. Meanwhile, relatives of Russian troops have complained at the conditions they face in the trenches, where they have been targeted by Ukrainian fire.

One Russian serviceman has given a snapshot of what these conditions are like for him and his comrades, in a video posted on X by Ukrainian internal affairs advisor Anton Gerashchenko.

An unnamed soldier filming himself inside a trench described how he had been at the site for seven days in audio that has been sped up. He said that Russian forces were trying to encircle the Ukrainian troops in the Avdiivka direction, but this operation had come at a high price.

"75 of us came here and now there are f***ing 14 of us here left. The rest are all 200s [dead] and 300s [wounded]," the soldier said.

"Look at what's happening here," he added, as he held up his filming device, presumably a phone, to show the devastation of the surrounding area. "The forest belt when we entered was alive," he said. "They were simply destroying us. Just destroying us," referring to Ukrainian troops.

He said that he had pulled out some of the dead bodies of his comrades who were lying "simply everywhere" but there were so many, that he could not get all of them.

He said that Ukrainian troops had dug in at the front where there were concrete bunkers about 1,500 feet away. "We were pulled back because we could no longer carry out the combat mission. We are stormtroopers for f***k's sake. How many of us are left in the company?"

He described how Ukrainian troops had fired on them using GRAD self-propelled rocket launchers and that "today we will withdraw on our own. I don't know how this will happen."

"We have survived because we have a very strongly developed instinct of self-preservation," he said "we will be alive, we will be safe, I hope to go on vacation soon," before the sound of incoming fire can be heard.

As of Monday, the video which has not been verified had received 330,000 views.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.

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