A RUSSIAN soldier has been filmed desperately pleading for his life after being followed by a Ukrainian drone amid the horrors of trench warfare near the besieged city of Bakhmut.
In the clip, the Russian troop can be seen crawling through the mud after frantically gesturing at the Ukrainian drone that he wants to surrender.
He is seen putting his arms across his chest in an "x" to indicate "no" to the drone's camera.
The man receives a note being carried by the drone reading in Russian: "Surrender and follow the drone."
Putin's beleaguered soldier then reaches for a piece of white fabric which he holds up as a sign of surrender.
As he follows the drone out of the trenches, he is fired upon by his own former comrades in the Russian army.
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Explosions go off all around him in the astonishing clip.
The footage is believed to have been filmed close to the besieged Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting in recent months.
He was given the chance to surrender under the Ukrainian government's "I Want To Live" project started last September to give Russian troops a way out of Putin's meat grinder war.
Sharing the footage, the "I Want To Live Project" said that it was "the story with the occupier who surrendered to the Ukrainian drone under Bakhmut [who] received a truly 'cinematic' continuation".
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The statement added that the lucky soldier's partner had chosen to "blow himself up with a grenade" instead of surrendering, as Russian troops have been told to do by their generals.
Close to 200,000 Russian soldiers are now believed to have died since the start of the war in February last year, many of them young conscripts from the poorest and most remote parts of the vast country.
Addressing Putin's soldiers directly, the "I Want To Live" project went on: "The moral of this fable is, Russian soldier, do not listen to the Kremlin butchers, do not believe their cannibal calls to die on Ukrainian soil!
"They will continue to dispose of people like you by the thousands and thousands. Ukraine, your life is more expensive than Russian commanders, because you can be exchanged for captured Ukrainian heroes.
"If you want to go home, surrender yourself to captivity."
It comes as Kremlin insiders claim a furious Vladimir Putin recently flew into a rage at his generals at what he sees as their bungling of the assault on Bakhmut.
The city has seen thousands of troops both from the regular Russian army and the pro-Putin private militia the Wagner Group, but despite Russia's overwhelming numbers, the brave Ukrainian defenders have so far held out.
An account on the messaging app Telegram called General SVR, which claims to be run by a Kremlin insider, has documented what it says was raging Putin's meltdown in the wake of his stalled offensive.
He is reported to have told his generals: "You f***ed it all up. Both Kherson and Artemovsk [Russian name for Bakhmut] are p***ed away."
If you want to go home, surrender yourself to captivity
Major new evidence has emerged today of Russian troops fleeing a Ukrainian advance in Bakhmut.
Pro-Kremlin Ukrainian blogger and politician Anatoly Shariy complained that Vladimir Putin’s forces were running "faster than an antelope, faster than a tiger, faster than an ostrich…"
He told how Russian forces have left ammunition and fled – despite complaints that they are short of the means of fighting.
Shariy posted: "This is a photo of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who occupied the stronghold [previously held by Russia].
"What do I see? The means of anti-tank warfare. What don't I see? Mountains of heroically dead soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
"Therefore, the version they had 'nothing to fight back with' is called into question."
The head of the Wagner Group, Putin's former chef Evgeny Prigozhin, has also broken ranks in recent weeks to claim that the Ukrainian forces are breaking through the Russian lines.
He told his followers: "The situation on the flanks [in Bakhmut] is shaping up according to the worst predicted scenario.
"Those territories, which were taken with the blood and lives of our comrades-in-arms for many months, every day, by tens or hundreds of metres are now being thrown almost without a fight by those [Russian regular troops] who are supposed to hold our flanks."
Prigozhin also sent a message to Putin’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu bluntly stating: "Our positions in Bakhmut are successfully attacked from the flanks by the enemy.
"Given your super long experience, please can you come to Bakhmut."
The Russian military command has denied a Ukrainian counteroffensive and said the frontline is under control.
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Ukrainian official Anton Gerashchenko posted a video showing "how the Orcs [Russian soldiers] fleeing Bakhmut under the blows of Ukrainian artillery".
This week, Ukraine shared a video of Putin's troops staging a humiliating retreat from Bakhmut just hours after he attempted to rally his soldiers during his Victory Day speech in Moscow's Red Square.
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