Kadyrovites captured by Ukrainian forces in Kursk region

The "I Want to Live" project has published a recording showing several dozen Kadyrovites who were captured in the Kursk Region of Russia. "Ukrainian raiding groups caught them deep in the rear," it reads. They abandoned the conscripts who were defending the Russian border on the day of the Ukrainian attack.

The "I Want to Live" project was launched in September 2022 and is aimed at Russian soldiers who want to voluntarily surrender to the Ukrainian army. The program operates under the auspices of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

On Sunday afternoon, the channel published a recording showing several dozen captured Kadyrovites.

"And here are those to whom the mothers of the abandoned Russian conscripts should 'thank' first and foremost. The raiding groups caught these Kadyrovites deep in the rear of the border. They tried to escape to avoid being captured, as Ramzan Kadyrov once said that the warriors of Akhmat would not surrender. Well, usually that's true, because they sit in the rear, but in the Kursk Region, the situation developed dynamically and these fighters didn't even try to resist," reads the communiqué.

The "I Want to Live" project believes that "Kadyrov's PR and the desire to protect his guards from hostilities are costing Russians dearly."

"In fact, if they defended the border and not hid behind conscripts on the tenth line near Kursk, such a rapid breakthrough would have been impossible. But at the border, there were ordinary 18-year-old conscripts and border guards. They also made the right decision to not participate in the battle and voluntarily surrender, saving their lives," it reads.

The information provided by the "I Want to Live" project is confirmed by the accounts of conscripts who were defending the border on the day of the Ukrainian attack on the Kursk Region.

- I am a conscript. I was standing near the village of Sverdlikovo. At the neighbouring post was Akhmat. When we were surrounded, they fled because Kadyrov ordered the Chechens not to be captured – said 22-year-old Yevgeny Kovylkin from the Belgorod Region.

Russians are shocked that the border was guarded by inexperienced and untrained conscripts. According to unofficial information, there were between 100 and 150 of them at the border on the day of the attack. Today, many of them are out of contact. They died, fled, or were taken into Ukrainian captivity.

- They promised that I would be in the Moscow region, in a tank battalion, and that I would not even approach the border, but ultimately it turned out to be not the case at all – concludes another captured conscript.

The case is shocking because it was dictator Vladimir Putin himself who promised the mothers that the conscripts – their sons – would not participate in active combat and would not be sent to the front. Since the attack on the Kursk Region, the families of conscripts have been massively posting online appeals for help in finding their loved ones.