Hundreds of refusenik Russian soldiers are locked in garages and cellars in occupied Luhansk region and fed only once a day.
They are among thousands of mutineers flouting orders to fight in Vladimir Putin ’s war in Ukraine.
“I am afraid to imagine what will happen next,” said Ilya Kaminsky, 20, a corporal serving with the 11th airborne assault brigade, one of those incarcerated for refusing to fight who has gone public with his demand to be released from the armed forces.
The refuseniks are reportedly under strong psychological pressure to halt their protests and go back to the front.
They are separated and hidden from other troops so as not to damage further the low morale in Putin’s armed forces.
The new evidence of the scale of refuseniks comes as Putin’s authorities are desperately recruiting new “cannon fodder” from jails across Russia.
Kaminsky’s wife Diana, 20, bravely defied the authorities releasing a video appeal for him to be set free so he can see his baby daughter Taisiya, now aged three months, for the first time.
She fears he will die if he is sent back to the front.
The couple have already lost the best man at their wedding Dmitry Bykov, 22, slain in April.
“A lot of our close friends have died,” she said.
Some 43 soldiers from his brigade have been killed, and as many as 77 from his brigade refused to fight.
Lawyer Maxim Grebenyuk said commanders try to “frighten the [refusenik] servicemen and force them to participate in the special military operation”.
They are isolated “so that they do not undermine the morale of the unit”.
Diana told People of Baikal online media: “I still don't understand what they [the Russian military] are fighting for.”
She called it “stupid and unfair” the soldiers put in harms way were mainly - like Ilya - from the east of Russia, not the regions around Moscow.
Ilya confirmed to the same publication that he was held in a grim locked garage and fed once a day.
Diana told journalists she had been unaware of the atrocities of Russian troops at Bucha or the air strike at Vinnytsia.
She released a video in which she said her husband had now been fired from the military for refusing to fight, then locked up in proxy state Luhansk People’s Republic.
“Due to his early dismissal from military service, he and others were placed in temporary detention facility No 1 near Luhansk,” she said.
“My husband repeatedly wrote requests asking to provide him with parental leave, but these were never approved
“Please, I beg you, help me to bring my husband back home, and this father back to his child.”
Verstka independent news outlet said that a single detention centre is being formed in the Luhansk region for soldiers who refuse to fight in Ukraine.
Currently, there are at least 234 people from different military units in the facility at Bryanka where they are forcibly detained.
Some 1,793 Russian servicemen have refused to participate in the war, said Verstka.
