Russia will use Stalin-style troops to shoot deserters, claims MOD

VLADIMIR PUTIN has likely deployed “barrier units” to gun down Russian soldiers who try to desert the frontline, according to British intelligence, in a reprise of Stalin’s brutal Second World War tactic.

It came as he yesterday called on Russian-installed officials to forcibly evacuate residents still living under occupation in Kherson in anticipation of a major military push by Kyiv’s forces. Mr Putin said Kherson, the last city occupied by Moscow on the west bank of Ukraine’s Dnipro river, would soon become the “most dangerous” zone for civilians in the country.

With a major battle looming, British military officials said Moscow had probably deployed so-called “barrier units” to shoot deserters refusing to fight to their deaths.

“These units threaten to shoot their own retreating soldiers in order to compel offensives and have been used in previous conflicts by Russian forces,” the Ministry of Defence said in its daily intelligence briefing.

“The tactic of shooting deserters [attests] to the low quality, low morale and indiscipline of Russian forces.”

Barrier troops or “blocking units” are widely associated with the Soviet Union. They were invented during the Russian Civil War, when Leon Trotsky sought to harden Red Army units.

They reached their apogee, however, in the Second World War. As Germany’s Wehrmacht scythed through the western Soviet Union, Stalin put out his Order No 227 which led to them being deployed en masse and staffed by members of the NKVD secret police. “Not one step back!” he wrote at the time.

But those targeted were largely officers, with lower-rank troops usually sent to gulags as punishment.

Even at a time when the Soviet Union could call on millions of men to fight, shooting men in cold blood was considered a waste of good soldiers.

The report comes amid Mr Putin’s fresh instructions for Russian officials to evacuate residents from the city of Kherson ahead of expected fighting.

“Now, of course, those who live in Kherson should be removed from the zone of the most dangerous actions, because the civilian population should not suffer,” Mr Putin told pro-kremlin activists yesterday.

In recent days, eyewitnesses in Kherson have described scenes of Russian troops dismantling military checkpoints as if they were preparing to abandon the key southern city.

But Ukrainian military officials insisted they do not believe the Russians are voluntarily retreating to the opposite side of the Dnipro, suspecting this could be a ruse to lure Ukrainian troops into an ambush.

Instead, Ukraine’s military yesterday said that some 1,000 freshly mobilised Russian troops had arrived in the area.

The Russian president’s remarks, the first time he has publicly endorsed an evacuation, came after one activist said he had been involved in the delivery of Russian flags to Kherson.

The southern city holds strategic importance, given its closeness to occupied Crimea, and historical value for Russia and Putin.

As a result, Russian soldiers in the area are expected to be ordered to fight to the death to maintain control over Kherson.

Mr Putin yesterday announced 318,000 men had been drafted for his war on Ukraine, with almost 50,000 of those conscripts already fighting on the front line.

He also signed a decree allowing civilians with convictions for serious crimes to be called up.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, accused Moscow of “energy terrorism” after repeated strikes on his country’s energy grid left more than four million people without power.

It came as the previously secretive private military group Wagner yesterday opened its first official Russia headquarters in Saint Petersburg.