Some of them wounded, most of them very young, all want to go home: taken prisoner during the surprise Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region, Russian soldiers now have only one hope: to be exchanged.
AFP was able to speak briefly with several of these Russian prisoners of war at a site where they are being held in the Sumy region, which faces Kursk in northern Ukraine, under the supervision of Ukrainian officers.
Sitting on his bunk, dressed in plaid trousers, a 22-year-old Russian conscript recalls the moment of his capture, in one of the biggest raids by Ukrainian forces since the war began in 2022.
“Everything was normal, everything was fine. And then this unexpected moment changed everything,” he explains, claiming that he and his comrades were “simply abandoned by the command” when Ukrainian forces crossed the border.
“It was unexpected,” repeats the young man, who had been doing his military service for 10 months at the time of his capture, as Ukrainian officers stand nearby.
He says he is now waiting to “be traded to go home to my family.”
Unlike contract soldiers and conscripts, Russian conscripts do not fight in Ukraine, but perform their one-year compulsory military service on the national territory. They are often young men with no real military experience.
Another detainee, a 42-year-old border guard with a bandaged leg, said he was captured on the first day of the Ukrainian offensive.
“The encirclement was complete, there was no way to break through it. So the decision was made to surrender,” he said, adding that he too wants to be exchanged. “That’s what I hope for the most, of course.”
Ordinary people
The deputy director of the establishment where they are being held, Volodymyr, is satisfied with the “very large number” of Russian soldiers captured during this Ukrainian assault of unprecedented scale against Russian territory launched on August 6.
He explains that the prisoners were at first “scared of everything”, expecting to be mistreated in detention. Then they ended up “coming back to life” and their psychological state “stabilized”, he assures.
“On the battlefield, they are hated soldiers [par les Ukrainiens]but when they are captured, they become ordinary people,” Volodymyr continues.
According to kyiv, several hundred Russian servicemen have surrendered since the start of the offensive, but their exact number has not been revealed.
An “exchange fund” boasted of by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said he was counting on an exchange “in the short term” for Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner by Moscow.
“This operation has become our largest investment in the process of freeing Ukrainians held captive in Russia,” he said.
A source within the Ukrainian security service (SBU) reported to AFP last week the capture of 102 Russian soldiers in a single day, the largest single haul.
The Russian military, for its part, has released videos on social networks showing Ukrainian soldiers on their way to the Kursk region or freshly taken into captivity.
According to an estimate by President Vladimir Putin last June, Russia is holding nearly 6,500 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The two sides have carried out multiple prisoner exchanges over the past two years, resulting in the release of thousands of people on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides.
This time, kyiv claims to be already in talks with Moscow for an exchange. Ukrainian human rights ombudsman Dmytro Loubinets said he was in contact with his Russian counterpart Tatiana Moskalkova on the subject.