DISINFO: Ukrainian armed forces shoot their own soldiers if they try to retreat
SUMMARY
Blocking units of the SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service, shoot at Ukrainian troops in Orikhove village, if they try to retreat. Retreating soldiers are punished by execution and their families will have trouble as well.
RESPONSE
The claim is unsubstantiated and no evidence is provided to back it.
This allegation may be a reaction to the emergence in the previous months of credible proof of Russia shooting its own troops if they refused to fight or tried to retreat in places like the Avdiivka front, including statements of Russian soldiers on social media, testimonies from Russian prisoners of war and drone footage. In late October 2023, the US formally accused Russia of executing its own retreating soldiers.
Accusing others of specific wrongdoings after Russia is accused or exposed for these same illicit actions is a frequent pro-Kremlin disinformation technique. In fact, pro-Kremlin outlets in Spanish language had already claimed that Ukraine was using anti-retreat troops to shoot soldiers who tried to surrender in the back in July 2022, after Russia had been credibly accused of these same actions a few months before.
See other examples, such as claims that Ukraine is plotting a chemical weapons provocation amid battlefield failures, that the US is recruiting Latin American cartel members in prisons to fight in Ukraine, that a Russian defector killed in Spain may have been eliminated by Ukrainian services, that Kyiv blew up the dam of the Kakhovka reservoir, or that Ukraine staged the Bucha massacre to derail peace talks with Russia.