Video recently taken near the Russian-occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine showed the crew of a Russian BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle waving the white flag to surrender as they drove up to Ukrainian lines.
The video was shared widely across social media on Thursday. From the footage, the crew of the Russian BMP-2 could be seen waving a white flag from the turret of their vehicle. The 30mm cannon of the Russian fighting vehicle was also raised upward, with a white sheet wrapped around the barrel.
As the Russian armored vehicle approached a squad of Ukrainian troops, it slowed to a stop near a berm and three vehicle crew members got out of the tank with their hands up, while Ukrainian soldiers surrounded the vehicle. The three crewmembers laid on their stomachs as the Ukrainian soldiers searched them for any weapons and then restrained them.
The Daily Mail reported the footage emerged after more than 2,000 Russian troops called a Ukrainian surrender hotline, offering to give themselves up rather than being captured.
Andriy Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence service, told The Daily Mail that some of the calls for surrender have come from Russian troops in Ukraine. Other surrender calls have come from recently conscripted troops in Russia and those who have not yet been drafted into service but fear they soon will after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent 300,000 reserve troop mobilization order.
Ukrainian troops have recently been retaking large swathes of territory that Russian forces seized months earlier in their initial invasion efforts.
Four Ukrainian areas recently held referendums, under Russian supervision, in which they voted to be recognized as part of Russia. Those four areas include Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya. After the vote, Putin signed decrees to incorporate those four areas into Russia.
According to The Daily Mail, with the latest Ukrainian advances, Russian forces are now losing territory in three of the four areas Russia annexed.
On Wednesday, Russian Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian forces would take the territories back, the Russian state-run TASS news agency reported.
“There is no contradiction here,” Peskov said of Russia’s annexation and then sudden loss of Ukrainian territories. “They will be with Russia forever, they will be retaken.”
