Screenshot: Telegram
A video of an unexpected encounter on the front line between a lone Ukrainian soldier carrying out a clean-up operation and a single Russian soldier hiding in a building has gone viral, despite its violent content.
The video, which appeared online this week after being recorded by a Ukrainian soldier’s helmet camera, was likely shot near the village of Trudove in eastern Ukraine, from which the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) were forced to retreat in December, Russian pro-war blogger Yury Kotenok said on Thursday.
In the footage, the Ukrainian soldier can be heard telling his command centre that he is carrying out a clean up operation, and his POV shows him approaching a house with the sight of his automatic rifle visible. At that moment, a Russian soldier hiding in the building opens fire at him, injuring his hand.
As the Russian soldier attempts to flee the building and ambush the AFU soldier, the Ukrainian grabs his gun and disarms him, after which a savage knife fight breaks out during which the Russian soldier can at one point be seen biting the Ukrainian soldier’s hand and wresting the knife from him.
Throughout the fight, the Ukrainian soldier can be heard calling over the radio for a comrade with the call sign Khaza, though he receives no response.
At the end of the video, after being stabbed twice by the Russian soldier, the Ukrainian soldier says “That’s it, Mum, goodbye” and asks the Russian soldier to leave him to die in peace. “Let me breathe for a bit. It hurts a lot. Let me go in peace. Don’t touch me. Let me die.”
The Russian soldier then steps away from the wounded Ukrainian soldier, suggesting that he complied with his request. The Ukrainian even thanks him for doing so and also congratulates him on being “the best fighter in the world”.
The bodycam footage has not yet been verified by the AFU, and neither the Ukrainian soldier’s identity nor his death have been confirmed.
The Russian soldier in the video has been identified as Andrey Grigoryev, from Yakutia in the Russian Far East, however. In an interview he gave to Russian propaganda channel RT on Friday, Grigoryev stressed that he had never intended to get into a knife fight with the Ukrainian soldier, but said that he had been left with “no other choice”.
Grigoryev, who signed a contract with the Russian Defence Ministry and is now on leave until 10 January, admitted that he hadn’t watched the video himself, explaining that it was “very hard to go back there again, to look at it, to remember it. It’s almost like I’ve forgotten about it here.”
