Remarkable footage shows how a Russian soldier crawled ‘through hell’ to surrender to Ukraine by communicating with a drone to follow it out of No Man’s Land – while missiles launched by his former comrades rained down on him.
The troop does not want to fight so tries to communicate with a Ukrainian drone, which had been dropping explosives on the battlefield in Bakhmut, that he wants to surrender.
The soldier, fed up of fighting Vladimir Putin’s bloody war, makes a series of gestures including putting his arms in an ‘x’ across his chest, to indicate ‘no’ to the drone’s camera.
The battered Russian soldier then reaches for a white piece of fabric which he shows to the drone to indicate his surrender.
It comes as reports continue to surface over Russians ceding hard-won ground and fleeing their positions in the fiercely contested bloody battleground of Bakhmut.
The soldier was given the opportunity to surrender under the Ukrainian government’s ‘I Want To Live’ project, which began last September, and gives Russian troops a way out if they have been forced to the front lines by the Kremlin.
The drone then proceeds to guide the soldier through the trenches in Bakhmut as he is shot at by former colleagues in the Russian Army and set upon by explosives.
As the soldier runs across the battlefield to seek cover behind a wrecked vehicle an explosion narrowly misses him.
Dylan Burns, a journalist reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine said he had ‘never seen anything like it’.
He said: ‘A Russian soldier, who doesn’t want to fight, attempts to communicate with a Ukrainian drone in order to surrender.
‘The drone gives him instructions telling him to follow it, he treads through no man’s land following the drone, all while being shot at by his former comrades for daring to surrender.
‘He survives after an astonishing journey through hell.’
The battered and bruised, but alive, soldier then briefly speaks in Russian to a camera.
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