RUSSIAN prisoners of war have revealed how their side was obliterated by Ukraine’s lightning-quick cross-border blitz into Kursk.
They told that some had been conscripted from inside Russian prisons by Vladimir Putin’s henchmen.
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Others disclosed they had been brainwashed by the authorities into believing they were fighting “Nazis”.
They spoke to The Sun on Sunday after we were granted exclusive access to the PoW camp in Ukraine.
Prison deputy governor Volodymyr Ivanovich revealed the captives were utterly terrified by Russian propaganda.
“They have all these ideas we are Nazis and fascists,” he told us.
“It is deeply embedded in their heads.
“They experience this fear that they will beaten up or tortured.
“As soon as they realise it’s not like that, they relax a bit.”
Some of the captured man fought for hours, some survived weeks, before they were held and taken into Ukraine.
In two weeks, 350 people were destroyed. There were only six of us left
Russian POW
One had been in prison for theft when Putin’s army chiefs dragged him out and conscripted him into front-line action.
He told us: “In two weeks, 350 people were destroyed.
“There were only six of us left.”
The father of five, who we will call Prisoner A, claimed his chiefs fled their positions when the invasion started.
He said: “Our commanders left and we had no contact with them for three days.
“Those three last days were like hell.
“From the 19th to the 21st of August we were constantly shelled.”
We met Prisoner A in an underground cell crammed with bunk beds which he shared with 14 other PoWs.
Many of them bore fresh wounds.
One had been shot through the thigh, one in the arm and another in the back.
Prisoner A had escaped unscathed.
The 46-year-old private said he joined the army from prison, where he was awaiting trial for theft.
Recruiters promised him money and land to serve in a notorious Storm-Z unit.
Their members, made up of criminals, are referred to as “just meat” by other soldiers
‘Weren’t waving white flags’
Prisoner A said: “The recruiters promised us one million rubles (£10,000) for signing the contract, a salary of 210,000 rubles a month (£1,800) and they promised me a hectare of land in St Petersburg when my contract was completed.”
He was guarding a command post around eight miles inside Russian territory when Ukraine launched its surprise attack on August 6.
Finally, on August 21, Prisoner A said his commanders ordered him to retreat, yet he insisted: “We weren’t waving a white flag.”
Surrendering on Russian soil could be seen as treason by the Kremlin.
He added: “We tried to escape our position when it was being shelled.
“We were heading down a road when two armoured personnel carriers appeared with Ukrainian infantry and they took us.”
Ukraine has seized 500 square miles of Russia, an area the size of the Brecon Beacons.
It is Moscow’s worst defeat on home soil since the end of the Second World War.
My only hope now is to go back home and never go back to war
Prisoner A
Ukraine has also captured 600 prisoners of war, which President Zelensky called an “exchange fund” to swap for Ukrainians held by Russia.
Prisoner A said: “My only hope now is to go back home and never go back to war.
“I hope my family situation, having five kids, will help.”
Ukrainian defence officials asked us not to reveal the location of the camp and guards were present in the cell throughout our interviews.
We are also not showing the faces of the captive soldiers, in line with the Geneva Convention.
A second captured soldier told us how his unit was “totally destroyed” in just three hours of tank and artillery bombardments.
The 44-year-old father of one, who we will call Prisoner B, said there were only “six people left alive” from a unit that was 20-strong.
He was captured at 2.20pm on August 18, near the town of Malaya Loknya.
He said: “We were attacked by tanks and mortars.
“When there were only six of us left we tried to escape into a sunflower field.
“But then we changed our minds.
“We tried to go back, but our bunkers were already captured by Ukrainian soldiers.”
He added: “I was the first one to come back and I saw five Ukrainian soldiers.
“They said if I started shooting they would kill me.”
Prisoner B was also part of a Storm-Z battalion after joining the army from a jail in Siberia.
Russia is notorious for pardoning rapists and murderers to fight in the war in Ukraine, but Prisoner B insisted he was awaiting trial for a drunken brawl.
Brainwashed by propaganda
His first reaction when he was captured was surprise that his captors were Ukrainian, having been so brainwashed by Russian propaganda.
He said: “I thought there would only be foreign fighters.
“That’s what they said on TV.
“I had been watching too much TV.”
Asked which countries’ soldiers he expected to meet, he replied with the N-word.
He added that he hoped to go back to Russia but was worried how he would be treated.
Soviet soldiers who surrendered during World War Two could be charged with treason and executed.
Those who had been taken prisoner were often exiled to labour camps — or shot.
Soldier B said: “I don’t know what will happen.
“Of course I am worried.
“I have a sister and a daughter to look after.
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“I hope this war, this whole horrific thing, will end and we will have our lives back.”
A third prisoner, Prisoner C, approached our team and insisted on speaking to us.
He said: “The other people you have spoken to were convicts, or they joined up because of debts or problems in their families.
“The Ukrainians were lucky in Kursk that they faced these kinds of soldiers.
“That is why they have advanced.”
The athletic 33-year-old said he was different.
He added: “I was in the marines, the 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brig- ade.”
Referring to Russia’s devastating siege of Mariupol in 2022, he said: “We were attacking the Azovstal steel plant, and no one surrendered.
“No one was captured.”
No one was retreating. We were fighting to the end
Russian POW
He said his unit fought almost to the death before he was captured at Novoivanovka, five miles inside Russia, on August 7.
He said: “We had 60 people and we fought for three days in a row.
“Forty of us were killed and the rest of us were injured.
“But no one was retreating.
“We were fighting to the end.”
The thumb and trigger finger of his right hand had been badly cut and were stained green with disinfectant.
He said he was trying to evacuate his wounded men, on a convoy of five quad bikes, when he realised they were surrounded by Ukrainian soldiers.
He claimed ten Stryker armoured vehicles, donated by the US, were less than 30 metres away.
He said: “Still we fought.
“Even the injured were fighting.”
But it did not end well for the Russians.
He admitted: “We were destroyed.”
The top corners of his chest bore matching star tattoos, which can be a sign of rank among Russian criminals.
Prisoner C did not mention a criminal past, but when asked about conditions in the Ukrainian PoW camp, he said: “If only our country had these kinds of conditions in their prisons.”
None of the prisoners we spoke to said they had met a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross, but they said other prisoners had.
And none of them said they had been able to call home to tell loved ones they are alive.
All three prisoners we spoke to said they had been told they were fighting Nazis.
And they all professed a strong desire — discovered in captivity — for the bloody war to come to an immediate end.
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Battle earns £25k bonus
RUSSIAN Wagner group mercenaries were paid a £25,000 bonus for capturing a tower block in Ukraine that cost 2,000 of their comrades’ lives.7
The bounty was split between eight survivors from a unit of 92 men that made the final assault.
One of the guns for hire, eventually captured, said the battle to take the nine-story block in Bakhmut earned the town its “meat grinder” nickname.
Russia finally took the bomb-blitzed town in May 2023, after ten months of scorched-earth slaughter.
Ivan, not his real name, said the size of bonus depended on the commander’s mood. His share came to just over £3,000 – equivalent to one and a half months’ wages.
Western officials said Wagner was losing 1,000 soldiers a day at the peak of the battle last year.
But Ivan insisted “Wagner was great” compared to the Russian army, which he joined after the mercenary group disbanded.
Speaking from the PoW camp, he said: “In the army, drunk officers and drunk commanders give stupid orders. There is no order or discipline in the regular Russian army.”
Ivan, a dad of four, was scrambled from a base near Kursk to stop Ukraine’s surprise attack in August but was captured after being knocked unconscious by an artillery blast.
He said: “I don’t think about my future. For now, I just hope I will stay alive. I was a fool to join this war.”
Asked why he volunteered, he said: “The city I lived in in Russia is almost a dead city. And Putin said if you join the army all your debts will be erased and you can earn some money.”
