Drone reveals Wagner group mercenaries joining battle
Blogger’s footage purportedly shows notoriously brutal hired fighters capturing Ukrainian soldiers
THE Russian mercenaries advanced in single file, picking their way over rubble in the eastern town of Popasna as they approached their target: a cluster of houses containing Ukrainian defenders.
One fighter, purportedly from the Wagner mercenary group, breaks away from the formation and approaches the house from the left. Then another, from the right.
A volley of grenades are thrown into a home with a green door and moments later about a dozen Ukrainian troops are seen lying on their stomachs – prisoners of the Russian invaders.
The skirmish, which was filmed by a drone, purportedly shows the moment that Russia’s brutal Wagner group captures Ukrainian soldiers as Moscow seeks to encircle Kyiv’s forces in the east and north-east.
Wagner, which takes its name from the composer Richard Wagner, was founded in 2014 and has been accused of committing war crimes in Africa and Syria while on assignments for the Russian regime.
Posted online by a pro-russian blogger, the footage from Popasna has not yet been verified, but it appears to confirm for the first time that Wagner has joined Russia’s eastern offensive.
Popasna, along with the nearby city of Izyum, is part of an intense struggle for control of strategic areas of the Donbas region, where Russia is now concentrating its military efforts.
Russia has reportedly moved more than 20 battalion tactical groups [BTGS] close to Izyum as it seeks to cut off Ukrainian forces – in what could be a decisive moment for the war in Ukraine.
The Ministry of Defence said yesterday that 22 BTGS had been deployed “near Izyum” in an effort to capture two significant cities nearby, which would lay the groundwork for encircling Ukrainian forces.
However, the Russian advance on eastern Ukraine appears to have stalled owing to a combination of incompetence, poor morale, troop losses and the beginnings of a Ukrainian counterattack.
“Despite struggling to break through Ukrainian defences and build momentum, Russia highly likely intends to proceed beyond Izyum to capture the cities of Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk,” the MOD said in its daily assessment.
It added that “capturing these locations would consolidate Russian military control of the north-eastern Donbas and provide a staging point for their efforts to cut off Ukrainian forces in the region”.
Izyum, which is occupied by Russian forces, lies about 70 miles south-east of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.
However, Western officials say Russia’s troop advances have already stalled in the Donbas region, which is widely seen as a pivotal region in deciding the outcome of the war.
This is partly due to Russian troops experiencing heavy losses in their failed attempt to capture Kyiv.
Russia also appears to have been duped by the Ukrainian army’s diversionary tactics – recent video footage of a Russian artillery strike on a trench near Izyum showed it was manned by decoy mannequins in uniforms.
Another video, posted online by Rob Lee, a military analyst at King’s College London, showed the moment a Russian artillery strike landed short of a Ukrainian trench in the same area.
“The position looks well-fortified and the soldiers are likely underground,” the analyst observed. “Not clear whether these strikes are particularly effective without a ground assault.”
Separately, Ukrainian forces are said to have pushed the Russians about 25 miles east of Kharkiv in a counter-attack that could potentially unravel Moscow’s progress in the east.
Analysis by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US think tank, says Russia could soon face a “dilemma” as to whether it should move back troops to reinforce Kharkiv or “risk losing most of their positions in artillery range of the city”. “The Ukrainian counteroffensive may ... unhinge the Russian positions north-east of Kharkiv and could set conditions for a broader operation to drive the Russians from most of their positions around the city,” ISW researchers concluded.
Reports emerged yesterday that Russia’s morale and supply woes include soldiers from South Ossetia, the Russian-controlled breakaway state in Georgia. According to Mediazona, an independent Russian news website that is blocked there because of its opposition to the war, some South Ossetia troops are refusing to fight in Ukraine and believe Russia will be defeated.
The soldiers reportedly complained of a lack of weapons and coherent orders, claiming that some artillery strikes missed by several kilometres and that they suffered frequent ambushes owing to a lack of intelligence.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army released an intercepted recording of a Russian soldier boasting to his mother about the torture of Ukrainians. He discussed a method, which is too graphic to print, involving the mutilation of a prisoner’s fingers and genitals.
Yesterday, Russia claimed to have fired two Kalibr cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets from a submarine in the Black Sea, and reiterated a warning that it would seek to hit shipments of Nato weapons to Ukraine.