MOSCOW, June 13. /TASS/. Reconnaissance groups from Russia’s Battlegroup East destroyed a Ukrainian subversive group near the settlement of Vremevka in the Zaporozhye Region, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on Thursday.

"During the reconnaissance team’s new combat raid to further reconnoiter the area at the Vremevka bulge in the Zaporozhye Region, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) squad detected a Ukrainian subversive/reconnaissance group in a forest belt on the community’s outskirts. Our artillery shelled the area using coordinates transmitted by reconnaissance groups, following which the UAV squad carried out pinpoint strikes by munitions from the air and destroyed the Ukrainian subversive group," the ministry said in a statement.

Russian reconnaissance groups surveil Ukrainian army positions round the clock and adjust artillery fire and air strikes in the south Donetsk direction. Reconnaissance groups move forward, leading basic forces, it said.

"We were assigned with probing a forest belt to see how many troops and how much equipment we could place there. I knew every bush, every hole there to hide personnel and equipment," the reconnaissance company commander with the call sign Melkiy said in a video uploaded by Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Russian reconnaissance groups also operate in the enemy’s rear to obtain recon data on the adversary’s numerical strength. They say that the Ukrainian army has actually exhausted its resources at the Vremevka bulge, it said.

"There is considerably less [Ukrainian army] equipment there now. We keep destroying it but they still bring in other hardware," the reconnaissance machine-gun operator with the call sign Voron said.

Russian reconnaissance groups now mainly confront NATO armament in their operations as the enemy has no combat vehicles and tanks of its own left, he added.