More than 6,000 complaints made between April and September last year have been reviewed by the newspaper. They were allegedly accidentally published online by the Russian Human Rights Ombudsman, who reports to President Vladimir Putin and receives reports from soldiers and their relatives.
The New York Times has gained access to the documents via the Russian, Berlin-based news site Echo.
Systematic abuse
The stories paint a picture of a brutal reality for many of the recruits in Putin's war machine in Ukraine.
The abuses appear to be greatest within units consisting of soldiers recruited from prisons and detention centers, writes The New York Times, which has been in contact with several of the people behind the reports.
According to the documents, soldiers are sent to the front despite, for example, cancer diagnoses, broken bones, mental illness and severe visual and hearing impairments. Released prisoners of war are immediately returned to active duty. Commanders are accused of systematically mistreating, blackmailing and even killing their soldiers. Soldiers are pressured to extend their expiring contracts under threat of being transferred to assault units with high casualty rates.
"How can you send back a person with cirrhosis, who has who knows how long to live, or with cancer?" says a soldier in an interview with The New York Times.
Chained to a tree
Another soldier describes to the newspaper how he and a comrade were chained to a tree for four days without food or water - a punishment for refusing what was perceived as a suicide mission. He has now hired a lawyer and refuses to return to the front.
"It would be like signing my own death warrant," he says.
Neither the Kremlin nor the Defense Ministry have declined to comment to the newspaper.
An investigation by the independent Russian newspaper Vjorstka has previously revealed how commanders have ordered drone operators to kill their own soldiers who were deemed “troublesome.” Soldiers have also testified that those who refused orders have been thrown into pits, beaten for hours, and in some cases forced to fight each other in deadly combat.
