'Shoot, we are unarmed': Verified videos show Ukrainians confronting Russian soldiers

Unarmed Ukrainian citizens have been filmed confronting Russian soldiers across the country amid the invasion.

Verified social media videos show a number of citizens protesting in the faces of armed troops, and blocking roads through cities.

One clip shows demonstrators gathering in the captured southern city of Melitopol to continue angrily defying Russian forces.

Unarmed civilians faced off against Russian military vehicles, some throwing themselves on the ground to block the road while others used their bare hands to try and halt the vehicles.

Another video from the main square of a nearby resort city, Berdyansk, mirrors the scene.

Local residents -- some elderly -- can be seen carrying Ukrainian flags and singing the national anthem as they encircle Russian occupiers. One clip shows a man speaking directly to a Russian soldier, stood just a few metres away.

"What? Will you shoot me? Go ahead, I do not have anything. Go ahead, are you not our brothers?" he asks.

"Go ahead, we are unarmed. Why did you come here? Leave while you are alive."

Many civilians describe the Russian soldiers as exhausted young conscripts, but the claims have not been proven.

Other verified videos have also shown fierce, unexpected resistance on the ground to Russian soldiers. One shows a Ukrainian driver jokingly offering to tow Russian tanks back across the border when they had run out of fuel, while others show Ukrainian farmers’ tractors dragging Russian vehicles away through the countryside.

Russian state media have continued to portray the Kremlin narrative that Russia has launched a "military operation" to "denazify" Kyiv. Ukraine has been labelled by Moscow as a "failed state" that poses an existential threat to Russia and had been responsible