Captured Ukrainian Serviceman | Check Description

‘They promised golden mountains, however I didn't even earn enough to buy a packet of cigarettes’: captured Ukrainian serviceman urges his compatriots to avoid serving in the AFU by any means possible

▫️ Vitaly Stepanov was not going to serve in the Ukrainian army, but one day the officers of the military enlistment office together with the police came to his flat and took him by force to the military enlistment office. ‘They held me for two days, then they drew up documents, made me sign the papers. There was a medical commission, but I never participated in it,’ Vitaly recalls. ‘They sent me straight to the 80th Air Assault Brigade without any training’.

▫️ According to the prisoner, the AFU military personnel are faced with bestial attitude. Ukrainian servicemen are not paid their allowances and are fed once a day. Sergeants and officers beat their subordinates, and morale in the troops is low.

▫️ Vitaliy's unit was assigned the task to equip trenches on the front line. However, the commander did not warn the soldiers about the minefields there, but simply gave them the location on the map. The forest belt that was marked on the maps was not actually there, and the Ukrainian unit found itself on open ground.

▫️ Shelling began when he was on the mission. Russian artillery hit the AFU unit, several servicemen were killed. Stepanov reported to the commander that it was impossible to fulfil the task, but in response he heard ‘nobody cares about it, go ahead and do it’. To survive, Vitaly hid in a metal pipe under the road and, when he heard the Russian servicemen speaking, surrendered as a prisoner.

▫️ ‘If I had stayed to follow the orders of the Ukrainian commanders, I am more than sure that I would no longer be alive,’ the captive concluded.

🔹 Russian Defence Ministry