A Ukrainian goat has injured several Russian soldiers after triggering their own tripwire and setting off a series of grenades.
Ukraine’s Chief Intelligence Directorate said the Kremlin forces were injured after they boobytrapped themselves in the village of Kinski Rozdory in Zaporizhzhia.
Putin’s men had installed pinned grenades around the perimeter of a local hospital and placed tripwires as a ‘circular defence’.
A Ukrainian goat has injured several Russian soldiers after triggering their own tripwire and setting off a series of grenades (file image of goats next to Russian tanks in Ukraine)
Servicemen of the 126th Separate Territorial Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine take part in military exercises in Odesa
But shortly after they laid the trap, an escaped goat from a nearby farm wandered towards the hospital and clipped the tripwire.
Ukraine said the animal instigated a chain reaction, injuring multiple Russian troops.
The fate of the goat is not known.
It comes as Volodymyr Zelensky urged his country’s allies to speed up shipments of heavy weapons to match Russia on the battlefield.
People look at destroyed Russian military vehicles near Irpin in the Kyiv region of Ukraine
‘We must free our land and achieve victory, but more quickly, a lot more quickly,’ Zelenskiy said in a video address on Thursday.
Moscow’s massive air and artillery attacks are aimed at destroying the entire Donbas region, he said.
Russia focused its campaign on southern and eastern Ukraine after its advance on the capital Kyiv in the early stages of the conflict was thwarted by dogged Ukrainian resistance.
The war of attrition in the Donbas – Ukraine’s industrial heartland – is most critical in the twin cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, which straddle the Siverskyi Donets River in Luhansk province.
Russia focused its campaign on southern and eastern Ukraine after its advance on the capital Kyiv
A residential building that was damaged during the Russian attack, in Hostomel, the town northwest of the capital city of Kyiv
The battle there is ‘entering a sort of fearsome climax’, said Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy.
Ukrainian forces were defending Sievierodonetsk and the nearby settlements of Zolote and Vovchoyrovka, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Thursday, but Russian forces had captured Loskutivka and Rai-Oleksandrivka to the south.
Hundreds of civilians are trapped in a chemical plant in Sievierodonetsk while Ukraine and Russia dispute who controls the bombed-out city.
Moscow says Ukrainian forces in the city are surrounded and trapped. But Gaidai told Ukrainian Television on Wednesday that Russian forces did not have full control of Sievierodonetsk.
Gaidai said all Lysychansk was within reach of Russian fire.
‘In order to avoid encirclement, our command could order that the troops retreat to new positions. There may be a regrouping after last night,’ he said.
TASS news agency cited Russian-backed separatists saying Lysychansk was now surrounded and cut off from supplies after a road connecting the city to the town Sieviersk was taken.
Hostomel, as well as other towns and villages in the northern part of the Kyiv region, became major battlefields, causing death and damage
Eastern Ukraine regions continue to be the main focus of attacks by the Russian troops
Reuters was unable to immediately confirm the report.
Britain’s defence ministry said some Ukrainian units had withdrawn, probably to avoid being encircled.
‘Russian forces are putting the Lysychansk-Sievierodonetsk pocket under increasing pressure with this creeping advance … however, its efforts to achieve a deeper encirclement to take western Donetsk Oblast remain stalled,’ the ministry said.
Yesterday, Kyiv said massive Russian bombardments are making life ‘hell’, while insisting its soldiers would hold on ‘as long as necessary’.
‘The Russian army is… just destroying everything’ in Lysychansk, Sergiy Gaiday, governor of the Lugansk region, which includes both cities, wrote on Telegram.
‘It’s just hell out there,’ after four months of shelling in Severodonetsk, he wrote later.
‘Our boys are holding their positions and will continue to hold on as long as necessary,’ he added.