Ukraine has an elite Special Operations Forces unit known as the Shaman Battalion, which focuses on destroying Russian infrastructure used to attack Ukrainian territory. The special forces are part of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and among the goals is the elimination of high-ranking Russian officers, The Times reports with reference to The Moscow Times.

The British publication talked to several members of the battalion, whose main tasks are military intelligence and operations to destroy infrastructure behind enemy lines.

“We have increased the number of targets, tasks for specific persons or objects, for example, buildings where a general or someone high-ranking in Russia is located,” – a 30-year-old sergeant with the designation “Intellectual”.

He showed a video of one such ambush near Belgorod, on the border with Ukraine, during which a Russian soldier was killed driving a truck.

“Inteligent” clarified that over the past six months, fighters of the “Shaman” battalion have successfully conducted “more than ten such operations.”

A Russian general was ambushed

He did not specify the name of the killed officer. However, the British newspaper learned that it was Colonel Volodymyr Kuznetsov, the commander of the 1009th motorized rifle regiment, which consisted mainly of servicemen mobilized from the Pskov region.

Russian mass media and Telegram channels wrote that on June 5, a Russian serviceman was ambushed in a company car near the border with Ukraine, in the Belgorod region. Kuznetsov was shot four times and died.

Last month, it became known about the death of FSB border police lieutenant colonel Andriy Skuratov. His car was blown up by a mine in the Bryansk region.

Ukraine claims to have killed 15 Russian generals

The armed forces of Ukraine claim that they have eliminated 15 Russian generals since the beginning of the war. Moscow confirmed the death of six of them.

We are talking about those who died this summer, Lieutenant General Oleh Tsokov, commander of the 144th Motorized Rifle Division, and Major General Serhii Horyachev, Chief of Staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, as well as Major General Roman Kutuzov, commander of the 1st. of the Army Corps of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Deputy Commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District Major General Andrii Suhovetskyi, Deputy Commander of the 8th Army Major General Volodymyr Frolov and retired Major General Kanamat Botashev.

Fighters of the “Shaman” battalion noted that the collected information is a key component of success in their tasks.

“The Russians love money and hate their generals, so we can get a lot of useful information in their army. And we have a lot of useful equipment, the guys always have kamikaze drones, sometimes they can knock down even a very powerful car,” said the young Ukrainian sergeant.

When a target needs to be destroyed, he says, six-person helicopter-deployed groups work best. The American Black Hawk, equipped with M-240 machine guns, is used for such tasks.

The “Shaman” battalion cooperates with Russian partisans fighting for Ukraine

For other operations, they have to walk there and back, so they have to cover 50 kilometers in full gear before they are allowed on a mission.

The military also said that special forces of the GUR sometimes cooperate with Russian partisans fighting for Ukraine, who perform tasks on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Previously, “Shaman” was a small unit, but now it has grown to a battalion. The Times notes that it is now a “much more ambitious force” than last year, when the paper first reported on it.

Air bases under the sights of Ukrainian special forces

The Special Forces confirmed that they have since achieved much greater success and have targeted hard-to-reach targets such as air bases.

“This is a very large target with heavy security. You can’t cope here with one special forces team that went on a mission. Our sources should be in the city or even at the base, in the Russian army,” the GUR military said.

In December, there were explosions at Engels-2 airbases in Saratov and Diaghilev in Ryazan, where Tu-22 and Tu-95 strategic bombers were stationed, which were used for strikes on Ukraine. Several Russian airbases in Crimea were also attacked.

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