Putin’s chilling child massacre revealed as Russia faces its worst military defeat in 80 years

Russia faced its worst battlefield defeat in 80 years this weekend, as chilling details emerged about new Russian atrocities against Ukrainian civilians.

Triumphant Ukrainian soldiers raised their country’s flags at the entrance to the strategically vital city of Lyman yesterday, just days after Vladimir Putin brutally annexed four occupied Ukrainian regions.

Some Putin’s troops are said to be trapped in Lyman, a major logistics hub, after being surrounded by Ukraine’s lightning advance. They are faced with the need to surrender or fight their way out in a move that would likely inflict huge losses on them.

But the breakthrough in eastern Ukraine came as new reports of Russian atrocities emerged and fears grew that a humiliated Vladimir Putin might resort to using nuclear weapons. At least 24 civilians, including 13 children and a pregnant woman, were shot during a Russian attack on a road convoy, Ukraine claimed.

Triumphant Ukrainian soldiers raised their country’s flags at the entrance to the strategically vital city of Lyman yesterday, just days after Vladimir Putin brutally annexed four occupied Ukrainian regions

Ukrainian troops showed reporters a group of vehicles full of bullet holes and several civilian clothes near the recently recaptured city of Kupiansk in northeastern Ukraine.

“Russians have fired at civilians at close range,” said regional governor Oleg Synegubov.

The region’s prosecutor’s office said Russian troops opened fire on a convoy of seven cars as civilians tried to flee the fighting.

“The row of cars was shot down by the Russian army on Sept. 25 as civilians tried to evacuate,” the office said in a statement. “Two cars are completely burnt out with children and their parents in them.” Meanwhile, Ramzan Kadyrov, one of Putin’s accomplices and the head of Russia’s Chechnya region, said yesterday in comments that will fuel fears of even more horrors that Moscow should consider a low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine. to use.

In a Telegram message criticizing Russian commanders for abandoning Lyman, Kadyrov wrote: “In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-efficiency nuclear weapons. His disturbing comments came as:

l Yesterday airstrike warnings sounded in Kiev as Ukraine braced itself for a barrage of rocket attacks in retaliation for Russia’s losses in the east of the country;

According to the British Ministry of Defense, Russian troops ‘almost certainly’ hit a humanitarian convoy in the southern region of Zaporizhzhya last Friday. At least 30 people in civilian vehicles were killed in the attack;

l The head of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant was detained by Russian forces as part of an apparent plot to transfer the site to the Russian energy company Rosatam;

l Explosions have been reported at a Russian air base in Crimea.

Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces in the east, said yesterday that Russian units in Lyman are “encircled” and that villages around the city have been recaptured. Up to 5,500 Russian troops were previously in Lyman, but the number captured is unknown as some withdrew or were killed before the encirclement.

Cars of a civilian convoy, which Ukraine’s state security service said was hit by shelling by Russian troops during the Russian attack on Ukraine, have been spotted between the occupied city of Svatove in the Luhansk region and the Ukrainian-occupied city of Kupiansk

Cherevatyi said Ukrainian forces controlled most routes out of the city and that some Russian attempts to break out “were not very successful.” Russia’s defense ministry later said it had withdrawn its troops from the city.

A Russian government news agency announced: “Due to the threat of encirclement, the Allies have [Russian] troops were withdrawn from Lyman to more advantageous defenses.’ Posted on social media by Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, Ukrainian soldiers displayed their blue-and-yellow national flag on the outskirts of the city.

The city will now be used as an intermediate station as Kiev tries to push through to the Luhansk region.

Professor Michael Clarke, former director-general of the think tank Royal United Services Institute, said Russia had suffered its worst battlefield setback since its defeats to Nazi Germany in 1943.

They haven’t had a defeat like this at the brigade level since World War II. They were defeated in Afghanistan, but that was a guerrilla war.’

Prof Clarke said Kadyrov’s comments about nuclear weapons did not increase the likelihood that such devastating weapons will be used.

“He’s on the verge of insanity. He thinks he has huge influence in Russia – and he doesn’t. We are still a long way from using tactical nuclear weapons.’

The United States has warned that there would be “catastrophic consequences” for Russia if it were to use nuclear weapons. A Ukrainian source close to the presidential government said Ukraine believes Putin will first use other weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical weapons.

Ukraine’s recapture of Lyman comes after Moscow on Friday used rigged referendums to illegally take Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya in eastern Ukraine.

A Western security source said the annexation of Ukraine’s four regions and the successes on the Kiev battlefield “make this the most dangerous period of the conflict since it began last February.”