Russian war tension spills over as Putin special forces fighter attacks guardsman on his own side

This is the moment Putin’s troops turn on one another when an irate special forces fighter attacks a Russian national guardsman, singlehandedly sparking an ugly brawl among comrades. 

Footage shows pro-Putin bruiser Andrei Marlin digging into the national guardsman four days after he returned from the horrors of the frontline in Donbas, Ukraine. 

Shaky mobile phone video shows the aggressive soldier swearing at a man in a balaclava in the lobby of the Voronezh hotel in Voronezh, Russia, about 150 miles from the Ukrainian border with the Kharkiv region. 

Marlin reportedly served in Ukraine as a mercenary with the Kremlin’s private military company the Wagner Group, and the brawl will serve as a warning to the Kremlin of what awaits them once traumatised fighters start returning to Russia en masse. 

The aggressive serviceman tells the Russian national guardsman: ‘My call sign is Marlin, I am [from] a special group of the 136th regiment.

He stalks over to the group of uniformed national guardsman loitering in the hotel lobby first pointing a finger and then lashing out violently at one balaclava-wearing soldier.

‘I will personally crucify you! I will p*** on you, f*****!’

He added: ‘Do you know who am I….? I defend your country!’

After the pro-Putin fighter hit the guardsman, another guardsman grabs his arm and pulls him to the ground while the rest steam in.

The Wagner fighter gets overpowered and violently beaten, with a baton, boots and  a rifle butt making sickening thudding sounds.

Marlin continues to shout and swear at the guards even while being restrained and still being rained on with blows.

He also shouted: ‘I fought for your country, and you, you f*****, threaten me?’

After he was detained his car was searched, where almost 500 gun cartridges were found, according to law enforcement. 

The Stalin Gulag channel said: ‘A new reality is coming for the police, with no rallies where women and schoolchildren can be beaten, but fighters who have felt the blood.’

It is unclear what triggered Marlin’s violent outburst but it can be assumed that conditions he faced serving with the Wagner Group in Ukraine contributed heavily towards it.

Recently, oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man known as ‘Putin‘s ‘chef’, was filmed at a penal colony in Mordovia declaring himself to be from the Wagner Group and offering convicted prisoners the opportunity to fight in Ukraine in exchange for a pardon from Putin.

All they had to do was fight and survive on the front lines of the war for six month. 

Prigozhin was seen giving the sales pitch to inmates in the bleak penal colony – a former Gulag prison camp – offering inmates earlier in the week in a leaked video.

The oligarch laid out some of the terms of the offer, including telling prisoners they should take their own lives instead of being captured in Ukraine, holding one grenade for the enemy and one for themselves.

Prisoners were warned they would be shot in summary executions if they deserted, but they can also become heroes of Russia in battle.

Prisoners who opt to fight for Putin are sent to the Wagner private army, ‘controlled’ by Prigozhin, which fulfils military orders of the Russian defence ministry in Ukraine.

‘This is a hard war, not even close to the likes of [Chechnya] and the others,’ he was videoed telling them.

‘Ammo consumption is two-and-a-half-times higher than in the battle of Stalingrad,’ where there were almost two million casualties, he said. 

And today it was reported that more than 28,000 prisoners including murderers, rapists and those guilty of grievous bodily harm have taken up the offer.

The scheme has so far led to the release of more than five percent of the entire male prison population in Russia as the Kremlin steps up recruitment of inmates after suffering a humiliating defeat against Ukraine‘s army in the east of the country.

The astonishing figure – revealed by independent Volya Telegram channel – is far higher than previous estimates of released prisoners fighting for Russia in Ukraine.

A new video this week showed 400 prisoner-volunteers in a dozen prison vans on their way to basic training. 

Most inmates are given just perfunctory training before being sent into battle on the front lines as assault troops, where survival rates are shiveringly low. 

Putin’s beleaguered forces may not have enough in reserve to hold off another Ukraine attack, defence experts say as mass graves finds show further evidence of war crimes    

By Walter Finch for MailOnline 

Beleaguered Russian forces still reeling from Ukraine’s devastating offensive may not have ‘sufficient reserves or adequate morale’ to withstand another concerted assault in eastern parts of Ukraine, according to defence experts.

British defence intelligence analysts believe Moscow has managed to establish a new defensive line between the Oskil River and the town of Svatove near the border between the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions.

The zone is viewed as important partly because capturing he Luhansk region, part of the Donbas, was one of Russia‘s key warm aims. 

Any substantial loss of territory here, one of the few main resupply routes from Russia’s Belgorod region, would ‘unambiguously undermine’ Vladimir Putin‘s strategy for the conflict, the experts say. 

It comes following the collapse of Russian lines in the east after a stunning Ukrainian offensive launched on September 6 that took the invaders by surprise, forcing the Kremlin to concede swathes of territory. 

In its latest update on the situation in Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it is unclear whether Russia’s frontline forces have adequate reserves or morale to withstand another concerted Ukrainian assault in eastern parts of the country.

Despite the superb performance of Ukrainian armed forces, President Zelensky said it was too early to say the tide of the war was turning, and that the outcome hinged on the swift delivery of foreign weapons to his country.  

Putin, in his first comments on Ukraine’s counteroffensive, brushed off the advances with a smile but warned that Russia would respond more forcefully if its troops were put under further pressure. 

This raises questions of how the Russian dictator could escalate in Ukraine, with some analysts predicting a general mobilisation of Russian citizens, while others fear that he could be contemplating the use of nuclear weapons. 

In light of the threat, President Joe Biden warned Putin to avoid using nuclear weapons as his forces are beaten back in Ukraine or face ‘consequences.’

In a preview for this Sunday’s 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley asked the president what words he would have for his Russian counterpart if he is considering using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons in the Ukraine. 

Biden responded: ‘Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. You will change the face of war unlike anything since World War II.’

When Pelley pushed the president for America’s response should Putin cross the line, Biden declined to comment on a specific plan, only saying that the US would act if nuclear weapons are put into play. 

‘It’ll be consequential,’ Biden said. ‘[Russia] will become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been. 

‘And depending on the extent of what they do will determine what response would occur.’ 

In the wake of the Russian retreat, Ukrainain forces have liberated dozens of towns and villages, including the strategic hub of Izium, where bodies have been unearthed at a mass burial site.

At least ten torture chambers were discovered in the Kharkiv region, with 500 bodies found in the mass grave. 

Ukraine’s police chief Igor Klymenko said that two torture centres were found in Balaklya, a town in the northeast of the Kharkiv region. 

The head of a pro-Russian administration pushed out by the counteroffensive, Vitaly Ganchev, accused Ukrainians of staging atrocities in the city of Izium.

The accusation follows the Kremlin’s usual playbook of claiming it has been framed over atrocities allegedly committed by its own forces. 

Klymenko said today that most of the people buried in the mass graves are civilians, with some of the graves marked only with numbers. 

Other graves bear military symbols, suggesting that soldiers are buried there. 

It is not yet clear how the people died, but the Ukrainians say some were likely killed fighting while others may have been caught in shelling and died from their wounds.

United Nations human rights monitors will go to Izium ‘to try to establish a bit more about what may have happened’, a spokesperson said. 

Zelensky said the dead included both children and adults, civilians and military.

‘Tortured, shot, killed by shelling. Even entire families are buried there: Mother, father and daughter,’ Mr Zelensky said.

Asked if the mass grave contained mainly civilians or soldiers, Klymenko told a news conference: ‘On a preliminary estimate, civilians. 

‘Although we have information that there are troops there, we haven’t recovered a single one yet.’

Police have begun exhuming the site to gather evidence of potential war crimes and Klymenko said authorities had opened 204 criminal cases probing the atrocities. 

Prosecutors have so-far uncovered Russian torture chambers and dug up graves of civilians whose bodies show signs of summary execution and have been mutilated. 

People have also told stories of being electrocuted during interrogation sessions, of rapes, forced disappearances, arbitrary detention and other horrors.

The head of the prosecutor’s office in the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv said that some of the bodies unearthed from the mass burial site showed signs of torture, with some buried with their hands tied behind their backs or ropes around their necks. 

Izium resident Sergei Gorodko said that among the hundreds buried in the individual graves were dozens of adults and children killed in a Russian airstrike on an apartment building. 

He said he pulled some of them out of the rubble ‘with my own hands’. 

Zelensky hinted at war crimes when he compared Izium to Mariupol and Bucha, two cities where Russia has systematically exterminated civilians in what has been described as crimes against humanity. 

‘We want the world to know what is really happening and what the Russian occupation has led to. 

Bucha, Mariupol, now, unfortunately, Izyum,’ he said. 

‘Russia leaves death everywhere. And it must be held accountable.’

The chief police investigator for the region of Kharkiv, Serhii Bolvinov, has said that the bodies will be exhumed and taken away for forensic examination.

It is part of a huge police effort in which the officers are working with prosecutors and other investigators on uncovering atrocities.

Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko said the recapture of Izium was a ‘huge strategic gain’, militarily speaking.

‘Ukraine is making confident advances in the north-east and the south-east of the country as well,’ she told Sky News.

‘We are making progress for our sake, but also for the sake of bringing back long-standing peace to the continent.’

Asked what she thought Mr Putin might do next, she said: ‘Nobody can be in the mind of that power-crazed leader.’

She added: ‘Whatever it is, we have to be prepared for it – we have to be prepared for it as Ukrainians, you have to be prepared for it in the UK.

‘And actually, people worldwide need to be prepared that something absolutely atrocious, another crazy move, can happen any time.

‘For that, Ukrainians need to have the weapons to protect themselves, the ammunition in the necessary amount to protect themselves.

‘And the West needs to be prepared to apply every sanction that there is in the book against Russia.’

Western sanctions are starting to hurt Russia’s ability to make advanced weaponry for the war in Ukraine, a top NATO military adviser said, though he said Russia could still manufacture ‘a lot of ammunition’.