Tattered and Bandaged, Russian POWs Describe Ukraine’s Offensive

Around 20 bedraggled Russian infantrymen huddled in a garage, reeking of days in fetid trenches and the backs of Ukrainian vans, while guards prepared to transfer them to a prison.

The first battles in Ukraine’s big offensive, aimed at retaking land in the country’s south and east occupied by Russia, are yielding a steady flow of Russian prisoners. Many will likely be exchanged, eventually, for Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner by Russian forces.

The men passing through Kramatorsk had surrendered after brutal firefights when Ukrainian forces attacked Russia’s first line of defenses near the town of Velyka Novosilka in the eastern Donetsk region. Ukrainian troops have made small but steady gains in the area. 

The Russian forward positions are meant to slow down the Ukrainians, allowing Russian commanders to move reserves to where they think Kyiv’s forces will try to break through the more formidable Russian fortifications that lie beyond. 

Ukrainian forces have yet to reach the main Russian defensive line. Early assaults on the forward positions have brought significant casualties, say soldiers involved in the offensive.

But the Russian infantry tasked with holding up the initial attacks in trenches and tree lines are taking heavier losses, according to men fighting on both sides. 

Many are facing Ukrainian brigades armed with more potent Western weaponry than at any time since Russian President Vladimir Putin

Several prisoners who spoke to The Wall Street Journal described morale on the Russian side as poor. The POWs quoted in this article described their voluntary surrender, which is a crime in Russia. The Journal verified their identities and has withheld their surnames.

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Anatoly, the shoeless rifleman, said the men in his unit barely spoke with one another at all as they waited for the Ukrainian advance. “Everyone was silent, thinking their own thoughts, wondering which side they will come from,” he said. “We were really scared. Nobody wants to die. We were hoping for the counteroffensive not to happen.”

A contract soldier from the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia, Anatoly said he was a construction worker back home. He said he joined the army to fight in Ukraine because friends and acquaintances did. “Propaganda said Ukraine was bad, people here are Nazis, and so on. We heard that everywhere.” He said he was a driver, fixing vehicles and ferrying drone operators, but a month ago he was ordered to a front-line position in a tree line west of Velyka Novosilka.

Last week, he said, “all was quiet for two days. But then a strong assault started. Everything became chaotic, munitions were flying, everyone started running,” Anatoly said. “Between shelling and mortar fire, I was trying to look into the fields, to find the enemy. But I couldn’t see anyone.”

Within minutes, he said, Ukrainians stormed the tree line and threw hand grenades into his trench. The five other men beside him were killed, including his good friend Georgy, he said. “I got out of the trench and started screaming, ‘I give up, I give up!,’” Anatoly said.

The prisoners at Kramatorsk were a mix of professionals, conscripts and mercenaries. Several were from ethnic minorities in Siberia, others from St. Petersburg or Vladivostok. Many wore tattered combat fatigues. A number were bandaged.

Anton, a fighter with Russian paramilitary group Storm Z, had suffered shrapnel wounds to his head and limbs in March. The head wound was particularly bad, leaving him with a stammer. A doctor said he was unfit to continue fighting in Ukraine, but his commander ordered him and other wounded men back to the front, he said.

Storm Z fighters, usually convicts recruited from Russian prisons, weren’t allowed to retreat, on penalty of being shot by their own zagradotryad, or blocking troops, Anton said. 

A former soldier in jail for drug dealing, Anton had signed up for six months’ combat in Ukraine and the promise of a pardon. But commanders treated the men’s lives as disposable, he said. “What I’m starting to realize is that in this war, we’re not on the side of right,” he said.

Ordered to a front-line position near Velyka Novosilka last week, Anton said he and others came under fire before they got there. A bullet hit him in the leg and another in the arm while he was bandaging himself, he said.

He and the other men, mostly wounded, shouted toward the unseen Ukrainian troops that they wanted to surrender: “If we go back, they’ll shoot us!” Then they sat and waited for the Ukrainians to arrive, he said.

“Morale is quite low,” said Dmitry, a conscript from Russia’s far east. “We were constantly in position with no rotation. It turned out that, according to the paperwork, we had been rotated out a month ago, but it didn’t happen,” he said.

Dmitry said he had been deployed to the Donetsk front after only minimal training, including some shooting practice in a field and basic first aid. His unit, defending the settlement of Staromaiorske south of Velyka Novosilka, lacked crews for some of its tanks and armored vehicles, he said.

His voice quavered as he described coming under heavy fire. “They opened up on us with tanks, mortars, artillery,” he said. After that, U.S.-made MaxxPro armored vehicles fired on their tree line and disgorged infantry. 

“I didn’t know what to do, I was in fear, I was panicking,” Dmitry said. He and a comrade came out of their trench with hands raised. As their captors laid them on the ground and bound their hands, another Russian jumped out of the trench and threw grenades, wounding some Ukrainians before being killed.

Dmitry said he hoped he wouldn’t be sent back to Russia in a prisoner swap, for fear of how the FSB security service would treat him. “The way our structures in Russia are working now, if I have the opportunity, I’ll refuse to be exchanged,” he said.

Write to Marcus Walker at [email protected]