Why are Ukrainian prisoners preventing in a Russian battalion?

Pavlo Oliynyk, 25, says he joined enemy forces to flee Russian captivity. Before his seize within the Donbas area in 2024, he was a senior lieutenant for Ukraine‘s armed forces.

As a prisoner of struggle (POW), he says he was electrocuted, crushed, and psychologically tortured. So when he obtained the supply to hitch the Maksym Kryvonis battalion — named after a well-known Seventeenth-century Cossack commander — he accepted.

Oliynyk says he wished to make use of this chance to achieve the entrance strains, so he might escape to Ukrainian-controlled territory. DW was capable of contact Oliynyk via his lawyer.

‘Ukrainian volunteers’ consist principally of POWs

Reports of Russian fight items consisting of Ukrainian prisoners of struggle and former servicemembers of Ukraine’s armed forces started rising in late 2022. Several detachments have been initially fashioned and in August 2026, they have been merged into the so-called “Ukrainian Volunteer Special Forces Brigade.”

Of the person items, the Maksym Kryvonis battalion has maybe drawn essentially the most public consideration for having evidently taken half in fight. Its true dimension is unknown —  Russian media studies declare about 200 fighters whereas accessible footage solely suggests a number of dozen.

An investigative staff of the Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne has identified over 30 members and confirmed they’re all former Ukrainian servicemen, captured by Russian forces between 2023 and 2024.

An ‘imitation’ of Russian legions preventing for Ukraine

Pavel Luzin, an knowledgeable for Russian international coverage and protection at the Center for European Policy Analysis, believes these items are an “imitation” of the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion — items within the Ukrainian armed forces, consisting of Russian residents — and an try by Moscow to distract from the truth that these items exist within the first place. Ukrainian intelligence companies are inclined to agree.

“It bothers them that Russians would combat on Ukraine’s facet, however Ukrainians will not combat on Russia’s facet,” Yevhen Shybalov, creator and veteran of the struggle in Ukraine, tells DW. He provides that Russian troops have by no means tried to cover the truth that Russian volunteer items in Ukrainian ranks have been the primary motive Russian forces wished to create Ukrainian items for his or her owns ranks.

Just how voluntary are these fight items?

In 2025, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that 95% of the launched Ukrainian POWs interviewed reported torture or ill-treatment throughout Russian captivity.

Bill Wiley, government director of the NGO Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), says that the bodily and psychological state of the returned combatants raises critical doubts that their recruitment was voluntary. Mykhailo Savva of the Center for Civil Liberties, a Kyiv-based human rights group, factors to the felony procedures working in opposition to a number of of the battalion members, which he says signifies that these recommend the combatants had switched sides voluntarily.

But the place to attract the road between voluntary and involuntary recruitment? The struggle veteran and human rights activist Maksym Butkevych, who spent 28 months as a prisoner of struggle, says the circumstances in Russian captivity make that line laborious to differentiate. On the one hand, he says, there’s a fixed environment of strain, and then again, it is not implausible that some prisoners defected out of ideological proximity.

How have been Ukrainian prisoners made to hitch Russian forces?

Butkevych tells DW that between 2022 and 2023, all Ukrainian prisoners of struggle had obtained affords, “roughly persistently,” to hitch the Russian military. In his case, he recounts, it was after he had been severely mistreated. “They confirmed us they may do something they wished to us,” the veteran explains, “which was why we must always comply with all the things.”

The veteran Shybalov studies related experiences. He speaks of makes an attempt to drive confessions of struggle crimes, or to recruit members for Russia’s intelligence companies, and tells DW all prisoners have been first interrogated after which made sure propositions underneath duress.

“You can torture individuals to get them to admit, however there comes the troublesome second when it’s worthwhile to give them a weapon,” he says. “That’s why it is extra about psychological strain, and forcing voluntary compliance.”

Butkevych confirms these accounts together with his personal tales. But neither veteran has ever met somebody keen to hitch Russian items, they are saying.

What occurs after conscription?

Oliynyk, from the Maksym Kryvonis battalion, says he initially turned down a number of bids to hitch Russian forces. He says he solely accepted the fourth supply so he might flee.

He claims he did not signal official Defense Ministry paperwork, however a personal contract with a person providing navy companies. Afterwards, he says, he was delivered to a room the place he heard lectures and noticed movies and photographs he was later requested to retell.

Control and mistreatment

He says fellow servicemembers within the Maksym Kryvonis battalion consisted each of those that had switched sides of their very own volition, and people who had been compelled.

In a video circulating on-line that seems to be of a trial in Ukraine, he additionally says that former Ukrainian POWs within the unit have been adopted and guarded by mercenaries of the personal navy firm Redut. In the identical video, he additionally speaks of beatings and torture, and receiving month-to-month wages in envelopes handed out by a member of Russia’s navy intelligence.

He tells DW he had been given a cellphone, however that he was too scared to name anybody in Ukraine as a result of it was underneath fixed surveillance. He denies having fought in opposition to Ukrainians, as he fled in March 2025 earlier than his first deployment within the Donetsk province. After working throughout a area, he says he spent two days hiding from drones in basements and homes earlier than making contact with Ukrainian fighters.

Now, Oliynyk has been in detention in Ukraine for practically two years whereas authorities examine attainable treason. He has but to be formally charged.

Sergey Nikitin contributed to this text, which initially appeared in Ukrainian.