NEW YORK, August 22. /TASS/. New Ukrainian recruits refuse to fire at Russian troops and are unable to stop Russian advance towards Krasnoarmeisk (called Pokrovsk in Ukraine), a commander in the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces said.

"Some people don’t want to shoot. They see the enemy in the firing position in trenches but don’t open fire.That is why our men are dying," he told the Associated Press. "This fear creates panic and chaos," the commander went on to say, adding: "This is also the reason we have lost."

"The new men do not have enough practice assembling and shooting their rifles <...>. They also have not learned how to coordinate combat tasks in small groups or to use even simple tactics," the media outlet writes, citing the commander. "From the command point, I would like to issue orders to small groups, but I am not sure if they are capable of executing these orders because they lack coordination and communication," he noted.

Ukrainian commanders blame poorly-trained recruits for failures on the eastern flank, especially for the territorial losses in the Krasnoarmeisk area in the Donetsk People’s Republic, where they "enabled Russia’s army to advance." In particular, the Russian forces liberated the settlement of Ocheretino on May 5 and the settlement of Progress on July 28.

Sergey Dobryak, head of the Ukrainian-installed administration in Krasnoarmeisk, said on August 15 that the Russian forces had come very close to the town; he urged local residents to evacuate. On August 20, the military administration in Dimitrov (called Mirnograd in Ukraine) issued emergency evacuation orders. Administration head Yury Tretyak said that "Pokrovsk has a couple of weeks to spare, but Mirnograd has only a few days."

The Russian Defense Ministry announced on August 20 that the command staff and servicemen of Ukraine’s 47th Brigade had been wiped out in a Russian airstrike in the Sumy Region.