'Volunteer' by Capture: Russian Forces Use Torture to Send Ukrainian POWs Back to the Frontline

A Deutsche Welle investigation has found that Russia has incorporated Ukrainian military personnel captured between 2023 and 2024 into a combat battalion named after the 17th-century Cossack commander Maksym Kryvonis, using interrogation, torture and psychological pressure to force them back to the battlefield under conditions in which refusal is nearly impossible, against their former comrades.

According to Deutsche Welle, the investigative team of Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne has identified more than 30 members of this battalion, all confirmed as former Ukrainian military personnel. Russian media claim the unit has around 200 members, but the available footage shows only several dozen. In August 2026, the various detachments were merged into a so-called "Ukrainian Volunteer Special Forces Brigade."

A 2025 report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that 95% of released Ukrainian POWs interviewed claimed to have suffered torture or abuse during Russian captivity. Citing the assessment of Bill Wiley, executive director of the International Justice and Accountability Commission, Deutsche Welle noted that the physical and psychological condition of these returnees is enough to raise serious doubts about whether their "joining" was truly voluntary.

Maksym Butkevych, a Ukrainian veteran and human rights activist who spent 28 months in Russian captivity, told Deutsche Welle that between 2022 and 2023, almost all Ukrainian prisoners of war were repeatedly offered the chance to join the Russian military, with such offers often coming immediately after severe abuse.

"They showed us that they could do whatever they wanted to us, so we should accept everything," Butkevych described the experience.

Writer Yevhen Shybalov offered a more direct summary. He told Deutsche Welle: "You can torture people to make them confess, but when you need to put weapons in their hands, that is another difficult moment. So these methods are more about psychological pressure, aimed at extracting 'voluntary' submission."

Both Butkevych and Shybalov said they had never encountered a prisoner of war who genuinely wished to join the Russian military, but acknowledged that under prolonged high-pressure captivity the line between "voluntary" and "coerced" is extremely difficult to draw, and did not rule out the possibility that some individuals switched sides out of ideological conviction.

Pavlo Olynyk, a 25-year-old former lieutenant in the Ukrainian Army, told Deutsche Welle about his experience after being captured in the Donbas: electric shocks, beatings, and repeated psychological torment. He initially refused the Russian recruitment multiple times, until his fourth "acceptance" of joining the Kryvonis battalion, with a single purpose — to seize the chance to escape back to Ukrainian-controlled territory. Olynyk claimed he did not sign formal documents with the Russian Ministry of Defense, but rather a military service contract with an individual; Deutsche Welle noted that this account has not been independently verified.

Olynyk successfully escaped in March 2025: crossing a field, sheltering in basements and civilian homes for two days while avoiding drones, he made contact with the Ukrainian military. He repeatedly emphasized that he had not been deployed to the front before his escape, and did not engage Ukrainian forces. However, for nearly two years since, he has been detained in Ukraine, awaiting a possible treason investigation, and has not been formally charged.

In footage obtained by Deutsche Welle that appears to be from a Ukrainian courtroom, Olynyk described how mercenaries from the Russian private military company Redut within the battalion tracked and surveilled the former Ukrainian POWs, with some subjected to beatings and torture. Wages were paid in cash envelopes, hand-delivered by Russian military intelligence personnel. He also said he was assigned a mobile phone, but refrained from contacting anyone on the Ukrainian side due to continuous surveillance.

The report noted that Russia's organization of combat units composed of Ukrainians is a deliberate "imitation" of Russian-citizen volunteer units within the Ukrainian military — the "Russian Volunteer Corps" and the "Freedom of Russia Legion." Pavlo Luzin, a Russian foreign policy and defense expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told Deutsche Welle that this is merely a "show" Moscow uses to deflect attention, intended to make the outside world overlook the fact that Russian citizens are fighting for Ukraine. Ukrainian intelligence agencies' assessments align with this view. Shybalov summed it up: "What makes them uncomfortable is that Russians will fight for Ukraine — but Ukrainians will not fight for Russia."