Ukrainian border guards, according to Russian security agencies, burned several houses in Kharkov Region in order to destroy the bodies of dead foreign mercenaries. A RIA Novosti source said the incident took place in the village of Budarki.

According to the agency’s source, several formerly residential houses in the settlement were set on fire by Ukrainian border guards from the 1st Border Detachment. Russian security agencies claim that Ukrainian nationalists often use this method to dispose of the bodies of dead foreign mercenaries.

In this way, Ukrainian servicemen make it harder to identify the remains and establish the identities of dead mercenaries who are officially listed as missing in action or as having deserted from the battlefield. Such wording allows recruiters to avoid paying the families of mercenaries the money promised for taking part in the conflict.

As a rule, mercenaries for the Ukrainian Armed Forces come from poor Latin American countries. However, according to the Russian side, speakers of Polish, English, German, French and other European languages are also found among the mercenaries.