regime, with orders to shoot those who refused their orders or attempted to flee. Russian Ground Forces According to Fedir Venislavsky, a member of the Ukrainian parliament's committee on national security and defence, the Russian Ground Forces used Chechen troops from the 141st Special Motorized Regiment during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine as barrier troops to shoot deserters who tried to leave combat zones. In October 2022, Ukrainian intelligence published a purported phone call where a Russian soldier described both his task of killing inmates recruited from prisons by the Wagner Group if they were retreating and how he would be killed by others if he himself retreated. In November, the British Ministry of Defence assessed that Russia was using blocking units. In film The 2001 film Enemy at the Gates shows Soviet Red Army commissars and barrier troops using a PM M1910 alongside their own small arms to gun down the few retreating survivors of a failed charge on a German position during the Battle of Stalingrad. The 2011 South Korean film My Way also depicts Soviet blocking troops shooting retreating soldiers during a charge. Both cases are part of fiction in the films. References Further reading Lai, Benjamin, Shanghai and Nanjing 1937: Massacre on the Yangtze, Osprey Publishing (2017), Karpov, Vladimir, Russia at War: 1941–45, trans. Lydia Kmetyuk (New York: The Vendome Press (1987) Overy, R. J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, W. W. Norton & Company (2004), , Органы государственной безопасности СССР в Великой Отечественной войне. Сборник документов, Том 1. Книга 1. Накануне, Издательство "Книга и бизнес", (1995) Том 1. Книга 2. Накануне, Издательство "Книга и бизнес", (1995) Том 2. Книга 1. Начало, Издательство "Русь" (2000) Том 2. Книга 2. Начало, Издательство "Русь" (2000) Том 3. Книга 1. Крушение "Блицкрига", Издательство: Русь, 2003, Том 3. Книга 2. От обороны к наступлению, Издательство: Русь, 2003, External links On the concept of Soviet Barrier Troops, as portrayed in popular media and in reality - Text (access date 2022-07-24) On the concept of Soviet Barrier Troops, as portrayed in popular media and in reality - Notes and Works Cited (access date 2022-07-24) NKVD Military of the Soviet Union