Unexpected weakness at Russian border revealed by captured soldiers

The British newspaper The Sunday Times presented accounts of Russian soldiers from the Kursk region. The Russians talked about the chaos that prevailed in the Russian Federation's armed forces when, on August 6, the Ukrainian Defence Forces launched an offensive.

The actions of the Ukrainian troops showed an unexpected weakness in the Russian border defence. This is confirmed by the Russians who were taken prisoner after the Ukrainian offensive. The soldiers were captured in the northeastern part of Ukraine. They reported the situation at the border in an interview with "The Sunday Times".

One of them, Serhiy Karimov, mentioned that his senior officer tried to call the battalion commander when their unit came under fire. However, the commander had already fled by that time.

Another prisoner said that they were given the order not to surrender alive to avoid torture. He detonated a grenade, thinking he would die, but was saved by a Ukrainian doctor.

A border guard recounted that his unit's commanders fled as soon as the Ukrainian troops approached.

According to another prisoner's account, when he and other captives were transported to prison, the Ukrainian soldiers escorting them stopped at a store and "bought water, cookies, and cigarettes with their own money. "We were starving," the prisoner reported. That cake was like manna from heaven for us," he added.

The prisoners were given clean clothes and shoes on arrival. "We had clean plates to eat from," said one of the captives. "The Sunday Times" reports that they go for a walk twice a day. They read and play chess. They are also properly fed. On the day of the meeting with the newspaper's reporter, they were served oatmeal for breakfast and vegetable soup with bread for lunch.

The Russian soldier also admitted that they have access to television. "We watch a lot of news. It's in Ukrainian, but I understand most of it," he added.

Source: "The Sunday Times", Ukrinform