Ukraine is using the tactic of "live demining" in their attempts to pass the Russian defense line, sending infantry soldiers to minefields under the fire of Russian artillery, who die there en masse, Russian Colonel Rustam Saifullin told Sputnik.
"He [the enemy] throws more and more. It takes quite a long time to train a sapper, to learn so many variants and types of mines. So they are just pelting our minefields with corpses, 'live demining' where people are just torn apart. They don't spare them," Saifullin noted.
According to him, Ukrainian engineer units suffer high losses as Russian intelligence detects them in time and artillery strikes them down.
The Hero of Russia serviceman added that clearing a minefield is in itself a great strain, which is even greater during artillery shelling.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Ukrainian command behaves as if their soldiers are not citizens of that country, pushing the military into minefields and under Russian artillery strikes.
Colonel Saifullin was wounded twice during the special operation while commanding an engineer-sapper regiment. He was awarded the title of Hero of Russia for courage and heroism in the performance of combat tasks. In particular, in one of the episodes he continued to command the forces entrusted to him under enemy fire despite heavy wounds, so his units coped with the crossing of the Seversky Donets River.