Ukrainian special forces soldiers in Kyiv's elite "Shaman" battalion are working inside Russian territory to take out some of Moscow's senior commanders, according to a new report.
"We have an increased number of targets, missions on specific people or targets, such as buildings where a general or somebody like that is located inside Russia," a Ukrainian sergeant with the call-sign "Intelligent," told London's The Times.
Fighters in the battalion have been "crossing the Russian border to strike airbases and kill the Kremlin's senior army commanders," The Times's Maxim Tucker wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Ukraine's Shaman battalion, reporting to Ukraine's military intelligence agency, is thought to have been working against Moscow's military for the best part of a decade. The leader of the Shaman battalion—who goes by the call sign "Shaman"—told The Drive's "The War Zone" in July 2022 that the special forces battalion had conducted "previous missions, multiple big numbers of them, into Crimea and other territories."
Russia has backed pro-Moscow forces in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region since 2014 when the Kremlin also annexed the Crimean peninsula.
"We had some operations in Russia long before 2022," he said. "Because Russia actually started this war against Ukraine in 2014, not in 2022."
In June 2022, The Times reported that the Shaman fighters were attempting to "destroy infrastructure vital to the Kremlin's war effort" in "covert raids inside Russia," citing two planning operatives and an intelligence officer.
On Monday, Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence said fighters with the Shaman battalion were "advancing deep into the occupied territories and continue to inflict losses on the enemy."
I caught up Shaman battalion, an Ukrainian special forces unit, who revealed they had been crossing the Russian border to strike airbases and kill the Kremlin’s senior army commanders. pic.twitter.com/7bkRTdeCTE
— Maxim Tucker (@MaxRTucker) August 9, 2023
The brief statement did not specify further details about where the fighters were operating, adding only that a Russian specialist unit was taken out. The fighters were deployed to the Russian-occupied east bank of Ukraine's southern Kherson region, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War think tank said in an analysis published on Monday, citing Ukrainian authorities.
Newsweek reached out to Ukraine's Main Directorate of Military Intelligence and the Russian Defense Ministry via email for comment.
Russian state news agency Tass reported on Thursday that a spokesperson for the GUR, Ukraine's military intelligence service, told Ukrainian rolling news that Kyiv's special forces were "working effectively, and not only on the front line but also behind the front line."
In a post to X, Tucker attached footage appearing to indicate a Shaman battalion ambush of Russian soldiers after escorting pro-Kyiv Russian partisans across Ukraine's border.
Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence previously published the footage, attributing the ambush to pro-Ukrainian Chechen soldiers.
