U.S. Volunteers Clash With Russian Forces in Intense Urban Warfare Video

New footage circulating online appears to show U.S. volunteers fighting Russian troops in Ukraine under near-constant mortar fire.

The footage shows soldiers advancing through a smoke-filled urban area with visibly damaged buildings. Faces captured in the footage have been blurred, but dialogue and what appear to be American accents can be heard over the sound of firing in the clips.

At several points in the footage, the group takes shelter in what looks to be the basement of an abandoned building.

Newsweek could not independently verify this footage, which was shared on social media by Eastern European outlet Visegrad 24. The outlet did not specify details about the fighters in the video, nor when or where the footage was filmed.

Since the start of the Ukraine war, international volunteers have traveled to fight on Kyiv's behalf. Shortly after the outbreak of all-out war in February 2022, Ukraine called for foreign nationals willing to fight for Ukraine to join the newly-created International Legion, one of the ways in which volunteers have joined Kyiv's fight.

Several U.S. volunteers are known to have been killed, including during fighting in the fiercely contested Donetsk city of Bakhmut.

Last month, Nick Maimer, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier who traveled to Ukraine in May 2022, was killed in Bakhmut. A video of Maimer's body, filmed and published by the Wagner Group of mercenaries fighting for Moscow in Ukraine, emerged on the organization's social media page ahead of confirmation of his death.

Dane "Bird" Partridge, a 34-year-old Idaho native, died in October, after making the journey to Ukraine to "go fight for a noble cause," his sister, Jenny Corry, told Newsweek at the time.

Memphis-born Joshua Jones, a former U.S. Army soldier who was killed in August 2022, was nicknamed a "tactical Jesus," a fellow volunteer a friend of Jones told Newsweek last summer.

The U.S. State Department previously told Newsweek that it wished to "reiterate our message that U.S. citizens should not travel to Ukraine due to the active armed conflict and the singling out of U.S. citizens in Ukraine by Russia's security officials."

"U.S. citizens in Ukraine should depart immediately if it is safe to do so using any commercial or other privately available ground transportation options," the department said in a statement on May 16.

This comes as Ukraine continues to make territorial gains with its long-touted counteroffensive in the country's eastern and southern regions. Kyiv's forces carried out operations in "at least three sectors of the front line" on June 19, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War think tank said on Monday.