Vladimir Putin’s Wagner Group death squads reportedly spotted in Ukraine

A shadowy group of deadly Russian mercenaries have reportedly been filmed fighting in Ukraine, amid warnings all-out war is just days away.

Wagner Group mercenaries have been filmed fighting in Ukraine as Russian troops storm houses in a bloody battle for control in the eastern Donbas region.

Drone footage showed Russian troops in the town of Popansa involved in intense street fighting with Ukrainian defenders.

The video captured the moment the death squads stormed a house, with the soldiers throwing grenades before forcing people to surrender, The Sun reports.

The soldiers are mercenaries from the Wagner Group, according to pro-Russian sources, a shadowy military contractor with links to the Kremlin which is thought to be responsible for atrocities in conflicts from South America to the Middle East.

The footage shows the soldiers storming homes in the town of Popansa. Picture: Supplied

Soldiers can be seen throwing grenades into the homes. Picture: Supplied

The footage first appeared in a Telegram channel of ‘Colonel Cassad’ – a pro-Russian blogger named Boris Rozhin.

It was re-posed by Rob Lee, a respected analyst from the War Studies department of King’s College, who repeated Rozhin’s claim that the troops are from Wagner.

This comes as experts have warned a devastating turning point in the invasion of Ukraine could be just days away, with Russian President Vladimir Putin potentially preparing to declare all-out war.

Insiders are now sounding the alarm over a possible escalation on May 9 – which will be 74 days since Russian forces first invaded on February 24.

May 9 – known as “Victory Day” – is a symbolic day for Russia, marking the surrender of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in 1945.

Each year, a military parade is held on the day, with Russian leaders watching from the tomb of Vladimir Lenin, and delivering a major address to the people.

So far, both Russia and Ukraine have shied away from a formal declaration, but given the huge significance of the date, fears are mounting Mr Putin will use the day to declare war on the neighbouring state, which could in turn be used to justify increasingly brutal action.

Experts have warned Russian President Vladimir Putin could be preparing to officially declare war on Ukraine. Picture: Alexey Danichev/Sputnik/AFP

“May 9 is designed to show off to the home crowd, to intimidate the opposition and to please the dictator of the time,” James Nixey, director of the Russia-Eurasia Program at Chatham House, explained to CNN.

One prominent expert who believes May 9 will be a turning point is UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who told LBC Radio that Mr Putin would be even more likely to take action on that key date given so far he had “failed” in most of his Ukraine objectives.

“I think what he’s going to do is he’s going to move from his ‘special operation’ … and he’s been laying the ground for being able to say, ‘Look, this is now a war against Nazis and what I need is more people, I need more Russian cannon fodder basically,’” he said.

“I would not be surprised … he is probably going to declare on May Day that, ‘We are now at war with the world’s Nazis and we need to mass mobilise the Russian people.’”

‘Calm before the storm’

Russia’s campaign to take Ukraine by force, despite unprecedented international sanctions, has dropped into a lower gear and become an effort to chip away steadily at the embattled nation’s defences in the east.

“The Russians can’t be everywhere at the same time. They try to grab small pieces [of the front] – one here, one there,” soldier Dmytro Sirenko told AFP.

“If nobody’s in the way, then they advance.”

In southern Ukraine, Russian forces have taken over a strip of territory stretching from the besieged port city of Mariupol to Kherson, the region just north of Crimea.

The frontline area visited by AFP includes large expanses of farmland with tractors in the fields working in places further from the shelling, while some stretches of land closer to the fighting were untilled.

In March, Ukraine officials warned the invasion could be disastrous for the nation’s harvest, which is crucial to global food supplies.

Several regions, especially the fertile lands around Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa in the south, are at risk because of the violence.

Yet for the troops spending hours watching across the fields for an attack, there are risks even more urgent than Ukraine’s farm production.

Troops told the AFP that they were watching out for a fresh offensive, saying everything had become eerily “calm” after weeks of non-stop fighting.

“Now it’s too calm,” said a soldier, Eugene, who did not give his surname.

“There had been a lot of ruckus around here. And now it’s calm … like before the storm, as they say,” he said.

– with AFP

Parts of this story were first published on The Sun and are reproduced with permission