Lots of people like that in the Ukraine military these days. It's very plausible this was some poor guy they kidnapped off the street and forced to the front line with a gun at his back. From what i have read they were in the process of replacing the better trained professional assault units that first went into Kursk with lower quality, forcefully mobilized troops for a while now.

They already had a shortage of trained and motivated manpower before, and they spent a lot of them in Kursk which further compounded the problem. Now apparently the remaining elite troops were sent back to the Donbass to try and plug the gaps and halt the collapse that is in the process of happening there, which is a big part of why things went to shit so fast in Sumy-Kursk. They've reached a point where plugging a leak in one place just opens up a bigger one somewhere else.

But i also wouldn't immediately take what someone who was captured is saying at face value. They have a vested interest in downplaying their enthusiasm and potential involvement in war crimes. After the Azov Nazis in Mariupol were captured every one of them claimed to be a cook or a driver.

That's what the one guy they interviewed about this is saying. Could be true; crazier things have happened in wars.

Although you'd think they'd want to keep the details of the execution secret in case they want to try doing something similar in the future.

In cases like this i would assume it's not uncommon to mix in some lies with the truth in order to obfuscate how it was really done. Like for instance, if they did it in two days, say it was done in four. Admit what you can't hide and change in small, plausible ways the details that the enemy is still in the dark about, such that they will be operating on faulty intelligence next time.

Of course they'd need the soldiers who were involved to go along with this and not get angry that their story is being told wrong...

Or maybe they really are telling us exactly how it happened because they figure this stuff will leak out eventually anyway. For me this is the simplest and most likely explanation, because it is very hard nowadays to keep things secret for long when the other side has a sophisticated intelligence network.

In any case this whole thing makes for a great story for the domestic Russian media. I expect that at some point in the not too distant future we will see Putin handing out some Hero of Russia medals to the people involved. And why not? If the story is true they deserve it.

I remember the Ghost of Kiev and the grannies with pickle jars taking down Russian jets too.

No, but on a more serious note, you just have to wait a while on these sorts of things until the fog of war has lifted before you can understand what actually happened. Especially when there is so much propaganda and cope from the Ukrainian side, while the Russians (and here i don't mean the Telegram rumor mills) typically like to stay silent until after an operation is completed.

There are always a lot of poorly substantiated rumors and misinformation right at the moment when something is happening. I think we're not really going to have a clear picture of some of the things that have been happening in this conflict until long after it's over, and historians as well as the soldiers involved start writing books about it.

Until then we are very much dealing with incomplete information. But in this case there are some facts on the ground that appear to be fairly indisputable, and one of those is that the entire Kursk pocket is rapidly collapsing. We can't be sure on the details but the broad picture is more or less confirmed by both sides.

As for what i personally think happened, and this is just my opinion, i think that if the whole operation had been a complete fiasco then the Ukrainians would have posted non stop videos and pictures of dead and captured Russians. What we instead saw was that there was suddenly a rapid collapse of Ukrainian positions in the northern Kursk pocket, which may or may not have had something to do with this operation. That would be something that you'd expect to happen if they suddenly discovered that they had an entire Russian unit unexpectedly appear behind them. Logically it checks out, but of course this is still just conjecture.

Just like all of Europe scrambled to organize the Minsk agreements after the disasters at Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo, now the US is begging the Russians to agree to a ceasefire. That is how you know Ukraine is in real trouble...

They are losing their minds