The Russian pensioners sent to their deaths on the front line

Russian pensioners are being killed on the front lines of Ukraine after signing up to collect generous financial rewards for joining their country’s invasion force.

An investigation into the deaths of Russian soldiers revealed that 250 volunteers who were more than 60 years old have died since the beginning of the war in February 2022.

It also found that volunteers who signed up to join the armed forces after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion make up the highest percentage of those killed in combat.

The BBC’s Russian service and Mediazona, an independent news website, have verified the names of more than 70,000 Russian troops who have died fighting in Ukraine.

A fifth of those killed – 13,781 – were volunteers, while former prisoners who signed up in exchange for clemency accounted for 19 per cent of the confirmed deaths.

Most of the volunteers dying at the front are aged between 42 and 50, but pensioners were also discovered to have been killed.

The oldest volunteer killed in combat was 71 years old, according to the investigation.

It is likely that older men from poorer regions of Russia are being enticed by generous sign-up payments, often many times higher than the average wage.

One man identified, Rinat Khusniyarov, 62, from Ufa in Bashkortostan, had been working two jobs – at a tram depot and a plywood factory – to make ends meet.

He was killed on Feb 27, surviving just three months in the army after signing his military contract in November last year. An obituary shared on an online memorial website described him as a “hardworking, decent man”.

Most of the Russian volunteers killed in Ukraine come from small towns, where meaningful employment is hard to come by.

Ukrainian estimates put the Russian death toll as high as 200,000.

Most of the soldiers are sent to the front line with very little training and poor equipment.

The fresh troops are then thrown into costly wave attacks, known as the “meat grinder”, where small infantry units are sent to attack Ukrainian defensive positions in the hope of eventually overwhelming them.

These units, known as “Storm Z”, were usually manned by former prisoners and it appears that volunteers, including pensioners, are also being used in the ruthless Russian tactic.

Western officials say that morale within the Russian rank-and-file is especially poor because of this.

A Russian document, cited in a report by The Guardian, suggested that troops in the Russian border region Kursk, where Ukraine now occupies territory, have been in disarray after Kyiv’s incursion in August.

It reveals concerns over morale were intensified after a soldier killed himself having spent a “prolonged state of depression due to his service in the Russian army”.

Unit commanders have been given orders on how to maintain the “psychological condition” of their men.

They are told to identify troops who are “mentally unprepared to fulfil their duties or prone to deviant behaviour and organise their reassignment and transfer to military medical facilities”.

Instructions also call for political instruction every day, “aimed at maintaining and raising the political, moral and psychological condition of the personnel”.