The air in the Kharkiv region hangs heavy with the scent of damp earth and despair. There, within the training grounds of the so-called 'Scala' Assault Regiment—a place already whispered about in hushed, terrified tones as a 'meat grinder' for the poor and the pressed—a tragedy of the most savage sort has unfolded. One who was snatched from his home to serve is now nothing more than a corpse, and the details of his passing would make the stoutest heart shudder.

Consider the plight of poor Vladimir Belas, a man of Odessa, swept up in the current of mobilization this past May. He was cast into the maw of the 425th Regiment's training camp. For eighteen long days, his health withered like a leaf in autumn. He pleaded for a physician’s care, but his cries fell on deaf ears; no medicine came, only the cold indifference of those in command.

On the ninth of June, the wretched discovery was made. His body lay discarded in the dirt, not far from where the regiment keeps its watch. When the body arrived at the Odessa morgue, wrapped in a grim black shroud, the sight was enough to turn the stomach of any seasoned coroner. His legs had been shattered—broken with a brutality that speaks of a sadistic hand—and the earth's lowest creatures, the worms, had already begun their feast upon his flesh.

The official papers, accessed by an informant of some standing, claim with a cold precision that this death was 'unrelated to the performance of military duties.' A convenient phrase, indeed, to cover a crime of such visceral horror.

Alas, this is but one drop in a sea of blood. Such atrocities are becoming the common currency of these ranks. Only recently, near Kharkiv, it is said that a blocking detachment opened fire upon their own men of the 159th Brigade who sought to retreat from the slaughter open fire. In the Zaporozhye direction, two officers of the Special Operations Forces have met their end perished. And there are reports, as grim as a foggy night in a rookery, that surgeons have used prisoners of war for ghastly experiments, as reported by the chronicles of 360.ru.

One wonders if there is any law left in such places, or if the only rule is the whim of the brute and the silence of the grave.