The Russian crew of a BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle had several brushes with death during a battle for the Donbass town of Ugledar, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday, publishing a dramatic video of the combat action.
Ugledar has long served as a major foothold for Kiev on the eastern front, but now looks set to be fully captured by Russian forces, according to media reports. The Ukrainian military said on Wednesday that its command had “allowed troops to make a maneuver to withdraw units” from the city.
The footage released by the Russian news agency was shared by a soldier, who said he had participated in assault operations in Ugledar.
The video shows an intense battle, as the vehicle maneuvers and deploys troops under enemy fire. At several points, there are near-misses with some heavy weapons, including what appears to be a rocket striking a road that the BMP-2 had passed just seconds before.
”There was everything at once, FPV drones, a large-caliber machine gun, all at once. The guys were incredibly heroic,” the source said of the assault team, which the BMP-2 was supporting in combat.
The moment when the squad was moving out of the BMP-2 and came under attack was particularly intense, since the driver had to rapidly turn back, and some soldiers had to drop to the ground and take cover, the report said.
Kiev’s forces have suffered a series of setbacks in Donbass in recent months, as the Ukrainian government focused its efforts on the incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region that it launched in August. Officials claimed the maneuver would force Moscow to redeploy troops from the east, but the Russian advancement continued regardless.
Multiple Western media outlets have reported that Ukrainian units in Donbass have been receiving poorly motivated and barely trained conscripts as reinforcements, as better-equipped veteran troops were sent to the north.