Seventeen coffins arrive in far Eastern Russian city

A woman collapses over one of the 17 zinc coffins that arrived last week in the far Eastern Russian city of Ussuriysk marked as "Cargo 200".

The local population of the city of Ussuriysk is expressing shock at the large number of coffins containing the remains of Russian soldiers who died in the Donbas fighting.

Despite all the efforts of Russian officials to keep the funerals and information about where these men met their deaths from becoming known, a former Russian soldier said by telephone from Ussuriysk that it appears they were professional soldiers ("kontrakniki") from the 14th brigade of the GRU Special Forces of the Russian General Staff.

In September, people in the city learned that about 500 members of that brigade had been flown to Rostov oblast, as it's said "to the West." Until June 2012, this brigade was based in Ussuriysk, a city of 167,000, before it moved to the larger city of Khabarovsk.

According to this source, these men being buried now met their deaths in one of the battles for the Donetsk airport, thousands of miles away.

Sources for this story here and here. 

ALSO

Update on 73-year old Lyudmila Bogantenkova who was arrested on Friday, Oct. 17 in Stavropol:

She remains in jail, a month and a half later, charged with "fraud" and "failing to repay a debt." Both charges are connected with her efforts to find out about Russian combat losses in Ukraine and to commuicate this to others. She is well-known as the president of the Prikumya Mothers of Soldiers Committee that seeks to protect soldiers from inhumane treatment, including torture [extreme "hazing"] of new conscripts.