Russian POWs Say They Were Tricked, Threatened During Invasion, families' shocked

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry has set up a Telegram channel with videos that it says show captured, injured, and dead Russian soldiers. This video shows Russian soldiers being interrogated. The prisoners are being questioned by their Ukrainian captors. It is impossible to independently confirm whether the information they give is accurate. The date and location of the video has not been verified.
As the Russian government remains silent about the number of losses it has incurred in its invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv is appealing directly to families of Russian soldiers to identify their relatives captured or killed in the four-day-old war.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry issued the appeal on February 27, directing relatives of Russian soldiers to online platforms where they can search through photos and videos of Russian soldiers captured or killed by Ukrainian forces. (Video Credit: RFE/RL)
Ukrainian officials have published dozens of videos of what they say are captured Russian soldiers, as the brutal fighting in Ukraine enters its fourth day.

In one of the videos, published early on Sunday morning on the Telegram channel Find Your Own, set up by Ukraine’s interior ministry, a visibly injured soldier identifies himself as Leonid Paktishev, the commander of a sniper unit based in the Rostov region.

The Telegram channel, which first went live on Saturday, has posted numerous videos and photos showing captured Russian troops, which have led to an outcry from their families who say they were shocked to find out about the involvement of their loved ones in the invasion of Ukraine.

The Guardian spoke to three family members who confirmed the identity of Paktishev and said they were shocked and angry when they found out after seeing the video that their loved one had been captured.

Russia has so far not commented on the videos released and has revealed very little information about the state of its soldiers fighting in Ukraine. The Russian ministry of defence on Sunday evening for the first time admitted that there were “dead and wounded soldiers amongst our comrade[s]”, but added that “the number of destroyed [Ukrainian] nationalists by far outweigh” the number of Russian casualties.

The Ukrainian ministry of defence set up a hotline for the family members of Russian soldiers called “Come Back Alive from Ukraine”. According to the Kyiv Independent, the hotline had received “hundreds of calls” since the start of the invasion.

#moscow #donetsk #vladimirputin #minsk #easterneurope #ukrainian #russianinvasion #ukrainecity #assaultrifles #ha #ykpa #violence #outdoorphotography #everydayesterneurope #semenivka #afpphoto #warinukraine #fromstreetswithlove #apnews #neweastinfocus #ukrainekrise #russianmilitaryadvance #antikrieg #amab #naturfreunde #ippnw #dfgvk #stopptdenwaffenhandel #waffenexport #waffen