Some Ukrainian soldiers are being left by their commanders without food and water for days at a time while being forbidden to retreat under the threat of death, according to a Ukrainian soldier who surrendered and was interviewed by the Russian Defense Ministry.
On Sunday, the ministry released a three-minute clip featuring Ukrainian soldier and former police officer Aleksandr Makievsky, who said he voluntarily surrendered to Russian forces after experiencing firsthand the hardships on the front line caused by the military leadership’s callous and ruthless attitude toward its own troops.
Makievsky said he was dismissed from the police force after refusing to join a Ukrainian assault brigade. Three months later, he ran out of money and received a draft notice and had little choice but to sign a contract with the military.
He claims he was told that he would be deployed to Donbass on the second line of defense, which was not supposed to directly engage with Russian forces.
“We were immediately taken and dumped there and told to dig in… The spades were blunt, work was impossible,” he recalled. “We had no food or water. By the sixth day, I thought I was going to die.”
He also recounted how one day he heard extremely chaotic and tense radio chatter when one Ukrainian group decided to retreat. “[The group] was told: ‘If you retreat, we will fire a volley of Grad rockets at your position. The war will write everything off.”
Makievsky admitted that he was scared and wanted to leave, but he knew that he would be executed by his fellow troops. “Two brotherly peoples are being pitted against each other… War is hell… The government embezzles money while the common people suffer. They are doing business, and commanders are no better,” he added.
Many of the Ukrainian soldiers who have chosen to surrender have accused Kiev of treating them as “cannon fodder” and failing to support them in combat with basic equipment. They have also complained of a lack of basic training and numerous desertions. Meanwhile, the Russian military has set up a special radio frequency that Ukrainians can use to surrender while guaranteeing prisoners of war humane treatment.