MOSCOW, April 6. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Ukrainian armed forces destroyed 14 of their own servicemen who surrendered at one of the lines of contact, where Russian servicemen were also injured.
"Here is what was reported yesterday: at one of the lines of contact, 14 people - Ukrainian servicemen - surrendered. Fourteen! But it was too late, and a few of our military stayed there with them. They didn’t even guard them, so that later in the morning the soldiers could be taken out of the combat zone. The enemy fired three hundred shells on that one spot! Destroyed all their soldiers," Putin said on Thursday at a meeting with the acting head of the Donetsk People's Republic Denis Pushilin. "Unfortunately, our guys were also injured," the president added.
He stressed that in Ukraine, Russia was dealing with an extremely brutal regime that spared neither Russians nor its own.
"Unfortunately, we are in fact dealing with a regime that is most brutal not only towards our citizens, but also towards its own," Putin said. "They behave in an extremely cynical and cruel way," he repeated.
"Our goal is to push them [Ukrainian troops] away to such a distance so that they cannot cause us any harm," the Russian head of state explained.
Addressing Pushilin, Putin noted that the issues he raised about protecting the population from shelling and the need to expand the capacity of roads were interrelated. "These communication routes, railroads and highways, they need to be built in such a way that both the speed of movement is increased and that they are at a safe enough distance from the combat zone. We will do all this," assured the president.