Elite Russian regiment fights for public support
One of Russia's elite fighting forces, the 331st Guards Parachute regiment, is back in Ukraine after suffering heavy losses at the start of the war.
State media tells a story of the unit's great heroism, but back in the regiment's hometown support for the fighters looks less certain.
Glimpsed on the official Rossiya channel earlier in June, an armoured vehicle races up to a field hospital carrying several badly-injured men in the Donbas battleground.
"The [Ukrainian] tank was firing at us," one of the Russian paratroopers explains, as his wounds are dressed, "...first near us, then straight at us."
These flashes of the bloody reality of this war are rare, but acknowledgements of the price being paid by the army are becoming less so.
|