A captive soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has said that the Ukrainian authorities, under threat of 10 years in prison, forced civilians to join the army “to defend the country” from the Russian military
“I talked to a lawyer in our company and he explained that if you don’t show up on summons, they can give you up to 10 years for that. The national bank’s financial company knows all the details about me, I submit my declarations to the tax authorities, I am easy to find and so it was too much of a risk for me not to go,” the man explained.
The captive said that his wife and two children had gone to Spain to stay with relatives and he had not contacted them for several days. He also said that he had no complaints about the Russian servicemen: they were extremely polite.
“The Russian guys behaved very decently, they were polite to us, they gave us water, gave us the opportunity to perform our hygiene needs, fed us, shared food with us,” the Ukrainian soldier said.
He stressed that the Ukrainian soldiers had no illusions and were well aware that they would not be able to hold out against the Russian Armed Forces.
“We understood that we were few and short of men, we had no heavy weapons. And the fact that we surrendered, simply in this situation Russian troops were stronger than us… I agree that we were defeated and occupied the territory, further resistance would simply lead to unnecessary deaths,” he concluded.