Veteran British sniper in Ukraine dodges Russian artillery attack and says Putin's forces are shelling fleeing civilians
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Furious Shane Matthew, who has travelled to the war-torn nation to train Ukrainian resistance fighters, has branded the bombardments by Vladimir Putin’s invasion force as a ‘genocide’.
The 34-year-old soldier, who served with 2nd Battalion Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment – Portsmouth’s local infantry unit – said he has witnessed explosive shells ‘raining down’ on bridges, churches and schools.
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Hide AdSharing photos from the streets of Irpin – a district just to the north west of Kyiv – on social media, the Afghanistan veteran from Chichester said: ‘These photos I have put up are of the “military targets” being attacked [by the Russians] today – military targets being a church, a two-storey school, a bridge… which was attacked as civilians were evacuating from the city.
‘I have just spoken to a chap whose dad was killed two days ago and today in the artillery strike that we were in just now, his son was killed.
‘And this is “denazification”?. We have forward controllers in the army to control where the artillery is landing and these guys haven’t done.
‘They are indiscriminately shelling every target in this city and the world’s just going to sit and watch this? It’s wrong – it’s a genocide. [they’re] war crimes.’
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Hide AdShane added that he had narrowly avoided being hit by artillery fire while drinking tea.
‘We were sat in this lovely summer house, just about to drink tea, and about 50m through there [a wood block], 120mm artillery just started raining down,’ he said.
During the past few days, Shane – a trained combat medic –has been teaching Ukrainian defence forces how to treat battlefield casualties.
Most of the forces heading to the front line ‘are civilians’ who ‘have never held a rifle before’, the former Lance Corporal added.
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Hide AdHowever, the military veteran insisted the Ukrainians fighting spirit was second to none.
He said: ‘The Ukrainian artillery absolutely hammered the Russians while I was giving one of my medical lessons.
‘Apparently the Russians have got no defensive positions in Irpin so the Ukrainian boys are absolutely hammering them, which is good news.’
He added: ‘On another note, all signs point towards Irpin being pushed through by the Russians, convoy killers in place, everything is fortified to hell and I can safely say that a collapse of the city will not happen.
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Hide Ad‘The guerrilla-style tactics being employed by the Ukrainians is something you simply cannot defend against, it’s like the Taliban on steroids.’
Today saw Russian forces launching a missile strike at a Ukrainian military base in the west of the country.
Ukraine says up to 30 Russian missiles at the Yavoriv base, close to the western city of Lviv, killing 35 people and wounding 134 others.
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