A Ukrainian service member fires an anti-tank grenade launcher at a front line near the city of Bakhmut
Reuters

KEY POINTS

  • The footage revealed Ukraine's volunteer fighters engaged in a fierce fight against Russian troops
  • Belarusian volunteer fighters said they had been ordered to "advance to the enemy's dugout"
  • Dead bodies have scattered in the trenches made by the Russian forces near Bakhmut

Graphic footage has surfaced showing Ukraine's volunteer fighters in an intense combat operation to clear the trenches made by the Russian forces.

Kyiv Post reported, citing a Telegram post of the ASP Terror, a battalion of Belarusian volunteers fighting alongside Ukraine, that the combat unit had been told to "advance to the enemy's dugout, destroy the personnel, occupy and secure a strategically important border" in the area near the heavily-contested Ukrainian town of Bakhmut.

The video revealed the Belarusian volunteers advancing and firing on Russian troop positions while passing several dead bodies along the way.

Several drone shots in the video showed the extent of the Russian trenches and the scattered bodies of dead fighters.

[WARNING: The videos below are extremely graphic]

Another headcam video, uploaded last month, showed the fierce fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Bakhmut.

The two warring forces were so close to each other that a Ukrainian soldier could be heard shouting, "What's up orcs? It's our field, f*ck off."

On Sunday, the notorious Russian paramilitary Wagner group said Russia promised to supply them with enough ammunition to continue their assault in Bakhmut.

"Overnight, we received a combat order... they promised to give us all the ammunition and armaments we need to continue the operations," Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and head of the Wagner group, said.

This came after Prigozhin threatened to pull out his private army due to Russia's failure to provide Wagner with sufficient ammunition after leading the grinding, months-long campaign to capture Bakhmut from Ukrainian control.

Prigozhin has also blamed the top brass of the Russian military for the heavy casualties incurred on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Wagner group and the Russian military have been at loggerheads for months over supplies and ammunition needed to sustain the operation to capture Bakhmut from Ukraine.

The rivalry between the two Russian factions worsened last month after the Ukrainian military said a shootout had broken out between Wagner fighters and Russian soldiers in the town of Stanytsia Luhanska in the Luhansk region. Both sides have suffered casualties from the incident.

According to the latest casualty report by the Ukrainian military, the Russian forces have lost 194,430 military personnel on the battlefield since the war began more than a year ago.

Russia has also accumulated other combat losses, such as 3,723 tanks, 7,248 armored personnel vehicles (APVs), 3,010 artillery systems, and 2,572 operational-tactical level unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Some Belarusian volunteers are fighting on the side of Ukraine, serving in the Kastus Kalinouski regiment battling Russian forces near Bakhmut
AFP