DEAD Russian soldiers were left decaying in their bunkers when Ukrainian troops overran their positions yesterday, but a devastating new offensive by Putin’s men is expected within days.

The Sun saw bloodshed after a big fight near Kharkiv, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to continue his killing in the east.

Bodies were slumped in blown-open dugouts after Ukraine took control of a ridgeline in the three-day fight for Mala Rohan, where forces believe they can overcome Russia.

“Whatever Putin does, we will not surrender,” one stated. We have triumphed in the battle of Mala Rohan. We are one step closer to victory.”

However, it comes amid growing concerns that Russia would use chemical weapons to shift the tide in its murderous invasion after many failures.

Dozens of Russian troops in T-72 tanks had dug into a treeline two miles outside Kharkiv and pounded the country’s second largest city.

They seized the ridgeline on February 26 and remained there for a month, until Ukraine’s armed forces launched a brutal counter-attack.

Residents said that the Russians, who were young and malnourished, raided a neighbouring furniture business and stole rolls of carpet to fill their bunkers.

Farmer Zlobina Lubov, 62, claims they stole her food and bombarded her barns, killing 140 cows, piglets, and lambs in the ensuing conflagration.

“They hardly had four days’ meals and so they started thieving,” Ludmila explained. They were removing everything with shopping carts.”

The Sun discovered bottles of rum, wine, and prosecco among the blitzed ruins of their tree-line positions, amid evidence of a struggle to the death.

Sodden remnants of Russian uniforms, empty rocket tubes, and the burned remains of tank rounds and rocket-propelled grenades stretched for nearly a mile.

According to Ukrainian reports, there were no Russian survivors, and the wreckage revealed how they perished.

There were two empty Russian helmets with single gunshot wounds at the rear. A third shot was fired through the front.

A T-72 tank rested in a gap in the bracken, its turret blasted clean off.

A few yards distant was a Russian MT-LB armoured personnel carrier used to haul howitzer cannons.

A burnt ammunition truck, a second destroyed tank, and an armoured personnel carrier were further ahead.

Heavy artillery had ripped up burnt black tree trunks all around.

To defend themselves, the Russians constructed shell scrapes – small grave-like shelters.

However, it was insufficient to save them from the Ukrainian onslaught.

Larger bunkers, probably command stations, had sandbag walls and were covered with branches and soil.

However, the majority of the rooves had been blown off, exposing half-buried dead Russians inside.

One soldier lay on his back, only his face and his camouflaged body visible among the soil that had retreated.

Birds had pecked out both of his eyes.

EYES PECKED OUT

A soldier was collapsed on his front in a second bunker, surrounded by filth and damp ration tins.

According to local military, the other bodies were removed.

Ukraine has also lost troops, but they have refused to specify how many.

A dozen empty boots, tubes of shaving soap, a credit card, and instructions for a medical kit were found in the woods.

A metal ration drum was labelled 6 MSR, indicating that the Russian soldiers were from the 6th Motor Rifle Regiment.

A rocket got trapped in the asphalt on the road below the ridgeline.

Another blown-up tank sat in a neighbouring hamlet, where a dozen people still dare to dwell, with a Z, Russia’s symbol for invading vehicles, on its flank.

In an homage to the British-made shoulder-launched rockets that have helped Ukraine’s armed forces destroy hundreds of Russian tanks, the name NLAW was written in silver lettering on its barrel.

Russian soldiers have been forced to retire as a result of defeats such as the Battle of Mala Rohan.

Russian military have entirely retreated from the towns around Kyiv and Sumy in the north.

In Kharkiv, on the other hand, a shell is trapped in the road outside the regional state administrative building.

Heavy artillery and Grad missiles thunder over Kharkiv at all hours of the day and night.

Medics treated a farmer who was shelled as he stepped outside with his wife to milk their three cows in the adjacent town of Chuguiv, roughly 12 miles outside Kharkiv.

“It’s a wonder I’m alive,” claimed Alexander Ignatov, 54.

An airstrike on the southern outskirts of Chuiguiv produced a 30-yard-wide crater and blasted two dozen dwellings.

Alexander Tsibulynik, 38, of an adjacent nine-story building, claimed only he, his wife, and an elderly neighbour remained when a bomb exploded only yards from their front door.

Ukraine claimed yesterday that it had registered 5,800 suspected Russian war crimes, and official data indicated 186 children had died and 344 had been injured – though the genuine total was considered to be significantly higher.