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A Russian soldier drove over his colonel with a tank – while two other service members were caught venting about strongman Vladimir Putin’s “bulls—” invasion of Ukraine amid reports of heavy losses.
The Russian soldier who was behind the wheel of the tank “blamed the commander of the group, Col. Yury Medvedev, for the deaths of his friends,” Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsimbalyuk said on Facebook.
“Having waited for the right moment, during battle, he ran over the commander with a tank as he stood next to him, injuring both his legs,” he wrote, the Daily Beast reported.
“Now Col. Medvedev is in a hospital in Belarus, waiting for monetary compensation for combat wounds received during the ‘special military operation to protect the Donbass.’ Colonel Medvedev was awarded the Order of Courage,” he wrote.
Although there was no independent corroboration of the claim, footage released by Chechen leader and close Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov showed Medvedev being transported to a hospital.
The incident comes as two groups of Russian soldiers in Makarov, in the Kyiv region, lost at least half of their comrades during heavy battles, Tsymbalyuk reported.
Meanwhile, two Russian soldiers were heard complaining about the Russian quagmire in Ukraine in an intercepted phone call, The Daily Beast reported.
“Basically, it’s a s—show here, I’ll put it that way,” a soldier near Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, was heard telling his comrade in a recording released by Ukraine’s Security Service.
The soldier described how Ukrainian troops “tore apart” a column of Russian forces and says 50 percent of his unit suffered from frostbite on the feet.
“But they don’t plan to treat them in the [field] hospital,” he said.
The service member also said that their commander, Lt.-Gen. Yakov Rezantsev, told them on the fourth day of their deployment that the war would be over quickly.
“Do you know what he told us? ‘It’s no secret to anyone that there are only a few hours until this special operation is over.’ And now those hours are still going,” the soldier said.
Soldiers also have complained that they were ignored when they reported that their Kevlar vests lack hardened panels, according to the phone call.
“‘Comrade General, damn it, I have this situation,’” he recalls soldiers telling the general. “And he just says, ‘Son, be strong,’ and then he f— off. It’s such trash here… our own plane dropped a bomb on us.”
“They couldn’t even send off the 200s here,” he reportedly said, using a Russian military term for dead bodies. “They rode with us for five days.”
He adds that “even in Chechnya, there was nothing like this … this ‘special operation,’ damn it … with respect to homes not meant to be destroyed… it’s bulls—,” The Daily Beast reported.
On Wednesday, NATO estimated that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine, where fierce resistance from the country’s defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought.
By way of comparison, Russia lost about 15,000 troops over 10 years in Afghanistan.
When Russia unleashed its invasion Feb. 24 in Europe’s biggest offensive since World War II, a swift toppling of Ukraine’s government seemed likely. But after four full weeks of fighting, Moscow is bogged down in a grinding military campaign.
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