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Source in Russia's defense Ministry has
reportedly confirmed they went over the
Border by mistake
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images of Russian convoys heading
towards Ukraine sparked fear that
Russian soldiers were being sent to
fight alongside separatist Rebels but
with Russian and Western media telling
starkly contrasting Stories the facts
were anything but
clear uh we have seen Columns of Russian
equipment entering into
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Ukraine Western media was very quick to
pick up the story The only evidence for
this was a number of photos sh showing
armored vehicles on roads in
unidentifiable locations those returning
injured have been hailed in Russian
media as volunteers while reports
suggest those missing in action are
likely to have been buried in secret
we're heading to the city ofof which is
about 4 and 1 half hours away from St
Petersburg and it's a very important
place for us to visit because in many
ways the story of Russian soldiers in
Ukraine really begins here there emerged
reports of soldiers being buried in
secret in various cemeteries within P
now other journalists went in to sort of
follow up on this and we started seeing
attacks against
journalists nearly a dozen reporters
investigating the mysterious deaths have
been targeted in a series of attacks
this one was captured on film by
journalists from TV rain Russia's only
independent television channel as they
were pulling up to the cemetery in scove
they were confronted by two men who
demanded they leave the city
immediately they blocked the car and
slashed the tires they also tried to
smash through the
window we wanted to find out what those
men were
hiding we're on our way to the graveyard
here and we weren't able to use a taxi
one of our contacts here warned us
against that and got us in touch with a
safe driver because apparently there's
been an unofficial order to all the taxi
drivers here not to take people to these
cemeteries we just stopped at a store to
pick up some flowers to bring to the
cemetery and notice that we actually
have a
tail whether it was just our paranoia or
The Detour we took around the city we
seemed to lose our tail and soon arrived
at the small Cemetery of
vub local press reports claimed an
entire company of scof based
paratroopers was nearly wiped out in a
single battle in Ukraine some of those
men were reportedly buried here in
secret so right now we're approaching
where we think at least two of these
graves
are oov Alexander serovich born in 1993
died August 20th 2014 around that time
we know that there was very heavy
fighting in
Ukraine and whose grave is this is this
katkin
katkin born September 30th 1984 he died
August 19th
2014 originally when he was buried there
was no Monument nothing it seems that
there was enough of a fuss sort of made
about these guys that they put up these
public
monuments this raises a lot of
uncomfortable questions for the Kremlin
Russia officially isn't fighting in
Ukraine in this case why our young men
from this unit coming back in body bags
and being buried in secret funerals
across the country
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the families of the soldiers whose
Graves we found refused to be
interviewed but there was one man in
scove who wasn't afraid to talk we're on
our way to meet with L schlosberg he's
an opposition politician and the
publisher of a local newspaper which was
the very first publication in Russia to
reveal that Russian paratroopers were
fighting and dying in Ukraine now when
this information became public
schlosberg himself was brutally beat
within an inch of his life the soldiers
from scof Died For What
these are your
offices and when this article came out
about these uh the Russian soldiers
being killed this was a huge sensation
here you were beaten within an inch of
your life do you think that this was
connected to the story of the Russian
soldiers in Ukraine
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if so many Russian soldiers are involved
in Ukraine though why do you think there
hasn't been sort of more evidence in
merging about this
the problem is that in a city like scof
this is a military town where the
families depend on the military for
their survival even those who lost their
loved ones I mean if they start speaking
out about this they have quite a bit to
lose so our plan now is to basically
start a search through little villages
in Russia that haven't been sort of
permeated by the military to see if
people will be willing to share their
stories about what in fact
in fact actually happened with their men
in Ukraine
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