Russian Military Deploys Undead Troops into Combat in Ukraine

By Bulletin Staff

The Russian military has deployed zombie soldiers into combat in Ukraine in violation of international treaties banning the use of undead forces, according to a new report released this week by an independent zombie research group.

The report, from the Romero Institute for Zombie Studies in Pittsburgh, cited eyewitness testimony from frontline Ukrainian troops who said they had engaged with Russian undead forces during fighting around the settlement of Opytne in the first week of September.

Frontline reporting typically is sketchy and unreliable due to restrictions on communications from the war zone. But Alan DeMoro, vice president of field research at Romero, said that the institute had been granted extraordinary access to the eyewitnesses because the Ukrainian government viewed the use of zombie soldiers as a significant escalation by the Russian military as well as a war crime.

“The use of undead forces has been banned since the 1997 Geneva Protocol, and the introduction of zombie soldiers onto the field of battle in Ukraine would mark the first documented violation of the ban in more than a decade,” DeMoro said. “The testimony our research team collected in Ukraine suggests that Russia has indeed elected to breach its commitments under the Protocol.”

One witness quoted in the Romero report, a Ukrainian Army sergeant identified only by the call sign “Slack,” said, “The Russians unleashed several waves of the undead as we battled house to house on the outskirts of the settlement. At first, we thought they were some kind of ‘super soldiers’ because they were wearing combat uniforms and they kept moving forward even after being shot multiple times.”

The Ukrainians realized that they were fighting zombies only once the undead closed to close quarters. “When they got close enough for hand-to-hand fighting, we quickly understood that they were zombies because we could see they had already begun decaying.”

According to Slack, his unit was able to eliminate the Russian zombies using headshots or bayonets to the brain. However, the sergeant said that the zombies bit several Ukrainian soldiers who subsequently reanimated as undead and began attacking other members of the unit before they could themselves be eliminated.

“It was chaotic and, if I’m honest, quite terrifying fighting against the zombies,” Slack said, “They are not as good as living soldiers, of course, because they are slow and they aren’t able to use weapons. But they can create a great deal of confusion, terror and havoc. In that sense, they can be a fiendishly effective weapon.”

Alex McBluffski, an expert in the Russian military and Russian military strategy, said that while there have been no recorded incidents of Russia employing undead forces in Ukraine or elsewhere since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western intelligence services believed that the Soviet military used zombie troops during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

“Soviet military doctrine dating back to World War II provided for the use of zombies as part of defensive formations, so it would not be surprising to learn that Russian military leaders – many of whom come out of the Soviet era – are applying these same tactics in Ukraine,” McBluffski said.

DeMoro said that the Romero Institute had forwarded its findings on to the U.S. government, the International Court of Justice and the United Nations Office for Zombie Containment (UNOZOC) in the hope that officials would take action to ensure Russia ceases its use of undead soldiers and meets its commitments under international zombie law.

The Romero report left many questions unanswered, including the origins of the zombie troops, how the Russian military was able to direct the zombies toward the Ukrainian lines, and whether Russia has additional zombie reserves to put into battle.

DeMoro declined to speculate on the origin of the Russian undead soldiers, but he noted that the 1997 protocol banned countries from using their own battlefield casualties as zombie combatants.

“This initial report simply aims to document Russia’s use of zombies in combat in violation of international law. Our research team will continue to collect additional evidence on the ground in Ukraine, and we expect to issue subsequent reports as more details become available,” DeMoro said.

Ukrainian government officials have declined to comment on how the country would respond to Russia’s use of undead troops. Russia’s ministries of defense and foreign affairs have not issued any statement on the report.

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