Over 2 dozen Russian soldiers were killed in friendly fire near the Donetsk airport when their chaotic retreat was mistaken for an attack, Ukrainian MP says
- A Ukraine MP said 27 Russian soldiers were killed by friendly fire during a botched retreat.
- The soldiers were fleeing positions in Donetsk when they were mistaken for enemy troops, per the MP.
At least 27 Russian soldiers in Donetsk attempting to retreat from their positions were killed by friendly fire from their comrades, according to a Ukrainian lawmaker.
Yuriy Mysiagin, a Ukrainian member of parliament, said in a Telegram message on September 10 that Russian fighters had "retreated to new positions chaotically and almost in a panic."
According to Mysiagin, the Russian forces assumed their troops were Ukrainians attempting to recapture territory near the Donetsk airport. The rushed exit caused the soldiers to endure friendly fire from their own artillery, Mysiagin added.
"The result was 27 dead and 34 wounded. Approximately half of the wounded had their arms or legs blown off," Mysiagin said. "Several pieces of equipment were lost."
Kostyantyn Mashovets, a colonel from Ukraine's armed forces, said in a September 10 Facebook post that the friendly fire likely kicked off because of poor coordination by the Russians.
"For some unknown reason, the enemy artillery began to fire, not near the front line or behind Ukrainian positions in order to suppress our firepower, but on the positions and rear of this unit," Mashovets said in his post, published on September 10.
Representatives for Russia's Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
This wouldn't have been the first time Russian forces gunned down their own troops.
In August, a deputy battalion commander of Ukraine's 129th Territorial Defense Brigade told The New York Times that he saw Russian soldiers taking fire from their own side.
The soldier, who goes by the call sign Kherson, was fighting the Russians in the village of Neskuchne as part of the Ukraine's counteroffensive. Kherson said he saw Russian forces firing rockets at the battlefield just as their soldiers were starting to retreat.
"They buried quite a lot of their own guys," Kherson told The Times.