A Russian soldier fighting in the bloody assault on the northern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has revealed just 12 men are left out his unit of 100 which has been treated “like meat” sent to the front line.
The exhausted trooper, from the fifth company of the 1009th regiment, was seen speaking in a video posted by the Russian news site Astra on the Telegram social media channel.
In the footage the dejected soldier, named by the Guardian as Anton Andreev, appears to suggest the Kremlin war machine is faltering in the face of severe Ukrainian resistance.
He said: “They just chop us up. We are sent under machine guns, under drones in daylight, like meat. And commanders just shout ‘forward and forward’.”
Andreev said he did not know if he would survive, but that he wanted to record a message to “honour the memory of those who died like meat here because of certain individuals”.
He added that he had been “caught up in a massacre” and that “during the first night, half the company immediately died”.
This month US President Biden authorised Ukraine to use American weapons to strike inside Russia to protect Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, prompting President Vladimir Putin to suggest his military could respond with “asymmetrical steps” elsewhere in the world.
Fighting along the roughly 620-mile front line has in recent months focused on the partly occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces are trying to reach the key hilltop city of Chasiv Yar and other strategic hubs.
Last month, Russian forces also launched an offensive in Ukraine‘s northeastern Kharkiv region, which borders Russia. Putin said he wanted to establish a buffer zone there to prevent Ukrainian cross-border attacks.
The offensive drew some Ukrainian fighters away from Donetsk. However, Russia’s gains have been incremental and costly.
In the Kharkiv region, Russian units have become bogged down in Vovchansk, Ukraine Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said this week on the Telegram messaging app.
Speaking at a peace summit in Switzerland this week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Russian leader Vladimir Putin had no interest in “genuine peace” in Ukraine.
Russia was not invited to the summit and Mr Sunak said the Kremlin had mounted a diplomatic campaign urging countries to stay away.
Mr Sunak, who took a break from the General Election campaign to attend, said: “I recall my first visit to Kyiv where I saw the explosive devices that departing Russian soldiers had placed in children’s toys and footballs.
“There can be no justification for that. There can be no justification for escalating nuclear rhetoric.
“There can be no justification for disrupting food supplies to tens of millions of vulnerable people.”
He said “Putin has no interest in genuine peace” and “he has launched a sustained diplomatic campaign against this very summit, ordering countries to stay away”.
