Ukrainian soldiers as goods
Report: Russian units trade prisoners of war
March 6, 2024, 11:53 p.m
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There is apparently a trade in Ukrainian prisoners of war within the Russian military. According to a report, Kiev’s soldiers end up in the hands of Chechen units for money. The prisoners of war then use these to later exchange them for their own fighters.
Russian troops are running a “black market” for selling Ukrainian prisoners of war to Kremlin paramilitary groups, according to a media report. This is reported by the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW), citing an article by the British “Times“.
According to this, Chechen units should buy Ukrainian prisoners of war from other Russian units in order to then exchange them for Chechen fighters who were captured by Ukraine. According to the Times, Chechen units take advantage of this “black market” because they are often stationed behind the front lines, where there are fewer opportunities to capture Ukrainian soldiers.
“There were cases when they bought our wounded from the Russian army, took them to Grozny and then exchanged them for their own,” Petro Yatsenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, told the Times.
Probably more than 4,000 Ukrainians taken prisoner of war
According to the newspaper, there is no article in the Geneva Convention that expressly prohibits the trade in prisoners of war. However, the practice probably violates a clause that states that no special agreement may affect the situation of prisoners of war. Based on the Times report, ISW experts suspect that some paramilitary forces within the Russian armed forces, such as the Chechen Akhmat special forces, are probably not involved in the overall Russian-Ukrainian prisoner of war exchange.
In the past, Russian war bloggers had repeatedly accused the Chechen units in Ukraine of incompetence and a lack of commitment. Because of their many PR campaigns on social networks, the associations are also mocked as the “Tiktok troupe”. According to the ISW, after the heavy battles for Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk in 2022, Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov’s fighters were transferred to the rear areas or a few active sectors of the front.
According to the Times, 2,700 Ukrainian prisoners have been released as part of exchange measures. How many Russians Kiev released for this is unknown. It is estimated that more than 4,000 Ukrainian military personnel are still in Moscow’s control.