Putin decorates Russian soldier in hand-to-hand combat video

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday awarded a soldier with the country’s highest honour for bravery after a widely posted video showed him killing a Ukrainian opponent in hand-to-hand combat.

Putin awarded Corporal Andrei Grigoryev the Hero of Russia medal for his “courage and heroism”, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Russian military bloggers this month posted a video purportedly shot by a camera on the helmet of a Ukrainian soldier.

According to Russian and Ukrainian media reports, the footage was actually filmed last year.

In the video, the soldier wearing the camera walks toward a house, then an exchange of fire begins and he throws a hand grenade into the building. A Russian soldier comes out and the two men begin fighting with bare hands and knives.

The soldier with the camera shouts for help in Ukrainian and at the end of the video finally asks his opponent to let him die in peace, saying: “Goodbye, mum.”

Pro-Kremlin media identified the Russian soldier as Grigoryev from the far-eastern Arctic region of Sakha — also known as Yakutia — where Yakuts, a Turkic people, are the largest ethnic group.

Ukrainian media identified the soldier killed as Dmytro Maslovsky from the southern Odesa region.

On Telegram, the head of Sakha, Aisen Nikolayev, confirmed he met Grigoryev in person on Saturday, hailing his “exploit” and describing him as “very modest”.

He said he gave Grigoryev a traditional Yakut knife as a thank-you present.

“People like him make our great Russia stronger,” Nikolayev said.

Russia has targeted some of its most remote and ethnically diverse regions to recruit soldiers to fight against Ukraine, offering high frontline pay.