Vladimir Putin’s military appears to have sent troops out on orders from the Kremlin with the express purpose of shooting soldiers who are retreating. On Monday (June 12), a video from the battlefield leaked, showing three armed Russian soldiers shooting at least seven of their fellow soldiers who were attempting to flee, appearing to lend some credence to these accusations.

The 14-second drone clip was first shown on the volunteer-run Ukrainian station Ishi Svoikh, which works to support the families of Russian servicemen killed in action.

It seems to show a fight between three armed Russian forces and seven soldiers fleeing. Six of the troops were fleeing, and the majority of them had also taken off their helmets and thrown away their rifles.

The three armed men can be seen in the footage firing bullets into the air and maybe towards two of the troops who are fleeing. All of the unarmed soldiers are forced to the ground as a result, but it is still unknown whether any of them were hit by gunfire.

The incident’s date and place were not made clear by the Telegram account that shared the footage. However, it claimed that Russian army personnel from a “barrier unit” were in charge of killing their comrades for running from the front.

The drone video’s veracity was confirmed by the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN on Monday.

UNIAN also revealed that “barrier troops,” or troops tasked with preventing soldiers from escaping battles by using lethal force if necessary, have been stationed in Ukraine alongside the Russian army for a number of months.

In November of the year prior, the British Ministry of Defence had already stated that it was possible that Russia had begun deploying “blocking units” or “barrier troops.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces are “moving forward” outside Bakhmut, the commander of the country’s ground troops said on Tuesday morning.

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Ukrainian soldiers destroying Russian positions in eastern Ukraine

In a Telegram post, Oleksandr Syrskyi said that Russian forces are “losing positions on the flanks” near the embattled eastern city, while characterizing Ukrainian operations in the area as “defensive.”

For weeks, Ukrainian officials have been reporting small gains west of Bakhmut, which Moscow took last month following the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

A day earlier, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said the country’s troops recaptured a total of seven villages spanning 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) of eastern Ukraine over the past week — small successes in the early phases of a counteroffensive.

Russian officials did not confirm those Ukrainian gains, which were impossible to verify and could be reversed in the to-and-fro of war.

The advance amounted to only small bits of territory and underscored the difficulty of the battle ahead for Ukrainian forces, who will have to fight meter by meter to regain the roughly one-fifth of their country under Russian occupation.

At least six people were killed when Russian missiles hit civilian buildings in an overnight attack Tuesday in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, regional officials said, as rescuers scrambled to retrieve people believed to be trapped under the rubble.

The strike involving cruise missiles hit a five-story residential building, which was engulfed in fire, Gov. Serhiy Lysak of the Dnipropetrovsk region wrote on Telegram.

After initial reports of three dead, Kryvyi Rih mayor Oleksandr Vilkul wrote on the social media app that the death toll had risen to a least six, and seven people were feared trapped under the rubble. Authorities initially said at least two dozen people were wounded.

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