Pro-war Russian Telegram channels released a voice message from a missing soldier who was transferred to the 5th Brigade shortly before his disappearance Igor Strelkov’s associate Mikhail Polynkov shared the story of a soldier who spoke about his missing comrades, “Taras” and “Nigma,” from the “Alga” battalion. They vanished after being sent on an assault. The article features one of the last voice messages from “Nigma,” Ildar Nigmatulin, sent to the author before his death. In the recording, he says he and another soldier were sent on a deadly assault. They survived, but the battalion’s political officer and commander accused them of failing the mission and locked them up in a prison before transferring them to the 5th Brigade. As for “Taras” — Denis Zakirov — his wife had previously spoken out. She published a video appeal, calling for help to save her husband, who was trapped in a dugout and left behind after commanders refused to evacuate him. She later found out that he had already been declared missing for a month at the time of the video. She believes the status was assigned intentionally to avoid rescuing his unit, which had lost contact. “Repeatedly wounded, mentally destroyed, this man [‘Nigma’], a father of four, went missing during the assault on Pokrovsk. He disappeared around the same time as my commander, ‘Taras’ — a true Russian officer and leader, also a father of four, who was always with his men,” the article says. “‘Taras’ disappeared under similar circumstances, raising serious questions about the competence of the commanders. Do you really think this meat grinder can be explained by war? Do you know what the few surviving original ‘Alga’ fighters call their battalion among themselves? ‘The butchery.’”