- The Ukrainian military says the Russians converted a meatpacking plant in Melitopol into a morgue.
- However, this plant has now run out of space to store dead soldiers, per the Ukrainian army.
- The Ukrainians said this pushed the Russian army to search frantically for industrial refrigerators.
Ukraine says that the Russian army has lost so many soldiers that it has run out of room to store their dead in the occupied city of Melitopol.
A press release from the intelligence division of the Ukrainian defense ministry said on Thursday that the Russians were looking for "additional refrigerators" to store the bodies of their dead soldiers after the Russians ran out of space in a meat-packing plant-turned-morgue.
"The occupation administration of Melitopol is urgently looking for additional freezers and industrial refrigerators. It is known that the city meat-packing plant, which was converted into a morgue, is already completely filled with the bodies of the killed occupiers and can no longer accept more," read the Ukrainian defense ministry's statement.
According to the Ukrainian government, the Russian ministry started repurposing the meat-packing plant on June 6 and converted it into a morgue. According to the Ukrainians, the owners of the meat-packing plant were informed they would have to hand over the plant free of charge to preserve the bodies of fallen Russians.
The Ukrainians added that the Russian bodies were being brought to the meat-packing plant from outside Melitopol. The Ukrainians said these soldiers likely died in fierce fighting near the cities of Polohy and Huliaipole in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.
"These events are associated with heavy losses of the occupiers in manpower," the Ukrainian defense ministry wrote. "In addition, the long-term storage of the bodies of those killed is due to the intentions of the Russian leadership to hide the real scale of losses from the Russian electorate."
This information from the Ukrainian government comes just a week after Putin ordered more than 134,500 conscripts to join the Russian army.
Russian forces occupied Melitopol in February. It has been under Kremlin control since, though the Russians face continued resistance from the city's Ukrainian residents.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has gone poorly, especially after it suffered "devastating losses" of its junior officers. Last week, Ukraine claimed to have destroyed an entire Russian army in Izyum. The Ukraine military also said this week that one of its brigades had destroyed an "elite" Russian unit after a 14-hour firefight in eastern Ukraine.
Separately, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia has lost at least 200 aircraft in the Ukraine war.
Western officials estimate that some 15,000 Russians have been killed in the invasion. Ukraine's Defense Ministry said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that 31,500 Russian personnel had been killed so far.