Russian deserters are being imprisoned by their own army in medieval-style pits covered with metal cages.

Desperate and injured Russian soldiers have told how they had been thrown into pits and denied food and water for refusing to fight or as punishment for heavy drinking.

Pavel Gorelov, a Russian soldier who identified himself as part of the 99th regiment, said in a leaked video: “We are in the mud, in the rain, we are all wet. My colleagues’ faces were smashed. All we did was drink a little beer.”

In the video, several men wearing Russian military combat uniforms sit on the floor of the pit.

Rainwater drips in. Several of the men appear badly injured, with black eyes and bloody cuts across their swollen faces. One man smokes a cigarette but is barely coherent.

“I’m begging for help from the prosecutor general,” Gorelov says in the video. “You’ve seen these conditions now.”In another video, another Russian soldier, possibly from the same unit, also complained that he was being kept in an open pit.

Flarit Baitemirov said that he was a volunteer soldier from Saratov in southern Russia and that he has been kept in the pit since the end of March. “I am being held captive by my own side, the Russians. I am Russian,” he said.

Open pits covered with grills called zindans were used in Central Asia to keep prisoners and were often deployed by Imperial Russian armies.

They were renowned for being overcrowded and disease-ridden. Exposed to the elements, inmates used to go mad in zindans as they glimpsed the outside world through the grill.

Russian soldiers have complained for months that military police throw them into overcrowded caves or pits without food or water if they refuse to fight.

It is difficult to know how many Russian soldiers are mutinying or deserting every day but analysts have said it is probably hundreds.

Russian military tactics have not evolved since World War II and are based on sending waves of infantrymen across open ground against Ukrainian machine gun posts and trenches.

These tactics mean that casualty numbers are high and are spreading fear and discontent within the Russian army. Desperate Russian soldiers have published dozens of videos this year pleading for senior commanders to rescue them from the chaos, death and destruction of the front line.Many of the units say in the videos that they are left with no option other than mutinying.

Dnipro crossing

Ukrainian soldiers have crossed the Dnipro for the first time since the early days of the invasion and built positions that could be used to launch attacks deeper into Russia-occupied territory, analysts have said.

The crossing of the river, which has marked the front line since Russian forces retreated from Kherson city in November, comes days after reports of a partial Russian retreat in the area.

Ukraine is expected to launch a counter-offensive, which analysts have said may be aimed at pushing 100 miles south of the Dnipro at least as far as Crimea.

The Daily Telegraph, London