[This may need to get filed under Too Good to Check or Truth in Advertising … and maybe both. — Ed]

A top Russian officer reportedly had his face ‘smashed’ during a brawl with furious conscripts after telling them their lives were going to be thrown away on the front lines in Ukraine.

The mobilised recruits turned on the Russian lieutenant-colonel after he bluntly said: ‘You are all cannon fodder, you are facing slaughter.’

The high-ranking officer had bones in his face broken in a brawl in which ‘every single one of them was drunk’, say reports.

Many of the reservists – among hundreds of thousands thrown into the war under a Vladimir Putin decree – were left distraught after being told they will die at the front.