As newly mobilised men return from the front in coffins, critics complain of aggressive recruiting, low morale and poor training
• Russia-Ukraine war latest – live blog
Andrei Nikiforov, a lawyer from St Petersburg, was one of the hundreds of thousands of Russians mobilised since last month to hold the frontlines in his country’s faltering war in Ukraine.
On 25 September he received his call-up papers. By 7 October, just two weeks later, he was dead.
