NEW – February 2, 2023
Captured soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) Artyom Kovalenko on February 2 said that, together with a group of colleagues trained in the UK, he surrendered after 20 minutes of the first battle near Svyatogorsk in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).
“First we got to Lvov, the next day we crossed the border, flew from Poland to Britain and then we got to the Warcop base by bus. In Britain, a young fighter lead a course — shooting, medicine, military law — and basic military things: storming trenches, storming cities, buildings,” RIA Novosti quoted Kovalenko as saying.
He clarified that he was called up on a summons from the military enlistment office, on June 22 he got into the 199th training centre of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and a week after staying there he was sent to study in the UK, which lasted three weeks.
After completing the course, Kovalenko’s group returned to Zhytomyr, where combat coordination took place within the framework of the 25th Brigade. According to the prisoner, after that, the UAF fighters went to the Volyn region to patrol in the village of Zabolotye, then they were sent to Svyatogorsk.
There, the Ukrainian military lived at a tourist base for four days. After that, the group left for the positions where it stayed for a month before being captured. Its task was to hold the defence.
“We were captured on December 1, we were bypassed and our positions were stormed. Twenty minutes of fighting — and we gave up,” Kovalenko added.
On the eve of the acting governor of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said that the Ukrainian military regularly defected to Russia. However, according to him, such cases are still not of a mass nature.
Earlier, on January 22, the chairman of the movement “We are together with Russia” Vladimir Rogov said that two officers of the elite special forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces switched to the Russian side in the Zaporozhye region.
On January 17, Rogov announced that more and more UAF soldiers in the Zaporozhye direction were going over to the side of Russia. According to him, we are not talking about units, but about dozens of people at once.
On the same day, the commander of a tank company of the Russian Armed Forces spoke about Ukrainian militants surrendering. He noted that this is especially not uncommon in the Zaporozhye direction.
Before that, on January 16, tankmen also told “Izvestiya” about Ukrainian militants surrendering. One of the Russian fighters reported that just last week 10 nationalists surrendered for the sake of saving their lives.
Izvestiya
Copyright © 2023. All Rights Reserved.