RT military correspondent Anna Dolgareva spoke with those who until recently fought as part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and now serve in a volunteer special-purpose brigade. It was formed from five units.
Many of them, after being taken prisoner, no longer wanted to return to the AFU and feared an exchange more than the war itself.
“If these people simply did not want to fight, after captivity they would have gone to a pre-trial detention centre, sat there in safety and warmth, eaten three times a day and waited for an exchange,” says the battalion’s political officer Jacques in response to a question about the motivation of those who joined the battalion.
30-year-old Hunter from Kyiv ended up in the notorious 110th Mechanized Brigade of the AFU — it is often called a “meat” brigade.
“In literally a month and a half our entire battalion was ‘wiped out’. Its strength was about 700 men,” recalls former AFU lieutenant Hunter.
Hunter requested an order to withdraw and was allowed to retreat. But when they started leaving their positions, their own side opened fire on them:
“Artillery, mortars and kamikaze drones started working. They even didn’t spare cluster munitions on us, which greatly surprised me. Our own command wanted to destroy us.”
He returned to the positions and surrendered to Russian assault troops during the next attack. After that he joined the volunteer battalion. One of the three surviving soldiers from his company now serves alongside him.
Several months ago, nine AFU soldiers from Krasnoarmeysk contacted them via the feedback bot in the battalion’s Telegram channel with a request to help them surrender safely.
“My wife said that if I went to the AFU I would never see my child again.”
Another fighter of the brigade — Bely — at the beginning of the conflict was full of patriotism. He left his wife, who told him to join the militia, and in 2015 went to Dnipropetrovsk, where he could not find work and enlisted in the AFU.
“…I remember how our side really struck civilian targets. There was a village called Krymskoye, also near Luhansk. Then about a week later scouts came to us and said they had hit a school. I didn’t understand and asked: ‘Why did you undershoot like that? Why do this at all?’ They told me that’s just how it turned out. Why shoot at infrastructure at all then? And it was on such nuances that doubt began to creep in that something was being done wrong,” Bely recounts.
By 2022 Bely’s desire to serve in the AFU had disappeared, but they would no longer discharge him. He was taken prisoner in the autumn of 2023. The Russians provided him with medical assistance and evacuated him. After that he joined the volunteer battalion.
