​The Russian military unit shot a video in which its servicemen apologize for withdrawing from the positions on the eastern bank of the Dnieper, occupied by their army after the withdrawal from Kherson.

“We are fighters of the 359th Smolensk Mobilized Regiment. Yesterday we were forced to leave our positions in an organized manner. The command was informed about the situation,” says the soldier on behalf of the unit.

He then explains that this was because the unit had been moved around for several weeks and that his soldiers had been told that their main objective was to “dig in”.

“We were armed with Kalashnikov and Mosin assault rifles. Our heaviest weapon was an RPG grenade launcher with a maximum firing range of 500 meters. At our last position, we built fortified positions with plates manufactured by the USSR, which had exhausted their resource a long time ago,” the military continued to explain.

He also says that the authorities promised the military to protect them, but allowed the construction to continue without informing them that the other bank was completely occupied by Ukrainian troops.

“We were going about our business when we were hit by relatively heavy mortar fire, which resulted in casualties. After trying to adjust our plan of action, it turned out that we have no communication with either the regimental command or the battalion command, no communication was organized even between different units,” – reports the Russian military officer.

Russian soldiers say they were let down by their commanders

“We had no artillery support, not even heavy weapons, we were alone with our Kalashnikovs that didn’t hit that side, we couldn’t do anything to repel the attack on us,” he continued.

“The next day, we were bombarded with high-precision mortars, coordinated from drones. A drone flew up pointing at our position, and the position of one of the units was completely destroyed. Then drones capable of launching grenades and charges arrived, and they began to drop them accurately into the trenches,” the Moscow military said.

He further states that the command repeatedly promised them artillery support, but during the day it was not there.

“Accordingly, we could not do anything as a single team, we only caused losses, so the decision was made to leave,” he concludes.

Although the Russian military does not specify the section of the front from which they withdrew in the south of Kherson region, a video that appeared on social networks on Tuesday shows how the city of Oleska on the eastern bank of the Dnieper and beyond was not occupied by the Russian military for kilometers.

The fact that the new footage emerged just one day after another strongly suggests that the Russian soldiers’ explanations would have been a direct response to the images, which went viral on social media on Tuesday and were also picked up by major international news agencies such as as as Reuters.

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