A Russian soldier is believed to have deliberately ran over his commanding officer with an armoured vehicle – fuelled by rage that the colonel had sent hundreds of his comrades to “certain death”.

According to an as-yet unverified report from Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsimbalyuk, some 750 out of 1,500 were killed, with many more wounded.

Tsimbalyuk does not specify the exact type of vehicle used in the incident, but it appears to have been a Soviet-era BTR – a type of armoured support vehicle resembling a small tank.

“A soldier, choosing a convenient moment during the battle, ran over his brigade commander, Colonel Yuri Medvedev, with a tank, injuring both his legs,” Tsimbalyuk wrote.

“Medvedev is in a hospital in Belarus and has already been awarded the Order of Courage,” he added, saying that the severely-injured Colonel is expected to be awarded compensation.

While the exact cause of Medvedev’s injuries remains unconfirmed at present, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov – a staunch Putin loyalist – posted a video that shows the colonel on a stretcher with his legs covered by blankets. He’s being loaded onto a truck ready to be sent to Belarus for hospital treatment.

One Chechen fighter currently operating with the Russian National Guard can be heard saying in the clip: “Hold on…how are you? OK? Talk to us…”

Medvedev groggily responds: “I'm OK. Where are you from?”

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He’s then told to keep his body amour on, and is taken away. There are no reports on what happened to the driver of the vehicle.

There have been multiple reports of very low morale within Putin’s invasion force.

According to a Telegram post from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) several Russian POWs have told their captors that "army leadership has resumed the practice of 'execution squads' – echelons that follow the main forces of the Russian Federation and kill those who want to escape," in a grim echo of Stalin’s World War II Soviet commissar squads.

One captured Russian serviceman told the SBU: "We can't desert or try to run, because echelons are coming after us, killing deserters who are trying to return to Russia."

According to the Ukrainian government, Russia has exhausted its “offensive potential” and is losing hundreds to drops to desertion, forcing Putin to call in reinforcements from the “depths” of Russia.

The precise scale of Russian losses remains unconfirmed but last week, American intelligence offered a conservative estimate that 7,000 Russian troops had been killed in the conflict.

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