Photo: ANATOLII STEPANOV / AFP / Getty Images
Russian soldiers cornered during Ukraine’s counteroffensive have been filmed surrendering to the enemy by waving a white flag from their tank.
Images show the vehicle heading towards the Ukrainian lines, when it is reported that Thousands of Russian troops throw down their weapons in the face of the bombing of kyiv and Russia continues to lose swaths of territory.
The lightning advance puts the Ukrainian defenders at a distance close to the city of Kherson, the only provincial capital captured since the invasion that began on 24 February which is still under Russian control.
Senior US officials said last night that Ukraine could even recapture Crimea, if the military continues to advance at the current rate.
The official told The Telegraph: “Ukraine’s reconquest of Crimea is a distinct possibility and can no longer be ruled out.”
Dr Mike Martin, a member of the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, said: “The Ukrainians have had a great day in the south: the Russian lines continue to collapse and fall back.”
In his late-night speech, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that his troops had liberated three more settlements in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine and that his offensive “continues”. the front line has collapsed with the loss of a staggering 1,500 miles square.
In the images, taken on the Jersón front, you can see see a ru infantry fighting vehicle so BMP-2 with several Russian soldiers inside driving downhill.
A soldier is in the turret, with a white flag waving on the barrel and another on the machine gun in front of him.
Clearly tense Ukrainian soldiers take cover and watch the vehicle as it turns and drives in front of them.
Then one of them emerges with his gun pointed at the tank while others also raise their guns.
When he stops, the Ukrainians advance towards him, all with their weapons pointed, while the Russian who was in the turret jumps with his hands in the air.
While the armed Ukrainians surround the vehicle, other Russians begin to emerge and, following the Ukrainians’ orders, lie on the ground while they are searched.
It is believed that the surrender was arranged in advance through a line special direct set up by the Ukrainians to allow the Russians to leave the battlefield.
Andriy Yusov of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine that “tens of thousands of soldiers” have called the hotline.
Thousands of Russian troops face encirclement on the west bank of the Dnipro after the only bridges across the four-mile-wide river were bombarded with long-range rockets supplied by the United States and the United Kingdom.
Russian state media quoted local pro-Moscow official Kirill Stremousov saying that the troops were “conducting a regrouping to gather forces and strike a retaliatory strike”.
Russian troops are expected to fall back to the river Inhulets, a few miles east of town.
While Thus, further north, the Ukrainian armed forces in the Kharkov area have advanced 12 miles into the defensive zone from Russia to the Luhansk region, the UK Defense Ministry said.
Putin last week signed treaties that sought to absorb the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in Russia.
The annexation followed Kremlin-orchestrated referendums in Ukraine that the Ukrainian government and the West have dismissed as a sham.
As his soldiers face humiliation, it is feared that Putin could turn the war in Ukraine nuclear by detonating a border bomb in a message to the West.
Russia has been waving its nuclear saber as its forces continue to be pushed back even as Moscow declared four regions its own. Its largest submarine, Belgorod, which can be armed with “apocalypse” nuclear torpedoes, is on the move, and there have been reports of a convoy linked to a nuclear unit on the move in Russia.
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