Brit Who Fought Russians in Ukraine Vowed Never to Be Taken Alive

An international volunteer who fought in Ukraine told Business Insider that Russia’s armed forces have such a reputation for brutality that his unit agreed never to be captured alive.

Russian forces are “incredibly dangerous, oftentimes fanatical or desperate people that would torture you and kill you if they caught you,” said Macer Gifford, the nom de guerre of British former trader Harry Rowe.

A veteran of the Ukrainian army, who previously volunteered to fight in Syria, Gifford fought in key locations in Ukraine, including in Kherson and Lyman.

He spoke to BI’s Authorized Account about the realities of fighting Russia, and the tough decisions his unit had to take.

‘Every depth of depravity’

While some Russians have reported torture and ill-treatment at the hands of Ukrainian captors, it has largely happened at the point of capture and “stopped when prisoners arrived at official places of internment,” a UN investigation found last year.

Not so Russia. The investigation said that there is “widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment” of prisoners of war throughout Russia’s entire system of internment. This includes beatings, electric shocks, sexual violence, suffocation, sleep deprivation, and mock executions, it said.

There have also been killings: Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Matsievsky became a cause célèbre after he was forced to dig his own grave before being shot in captivity, the BBC reported.

“Russia has gone to every depth of depravity you could possibly imagine,” Gifford said.

That’s why his unit entered into a pact — even expelling one member who tried to surrender during a firefight, he said. There was an agreement that “no one in the unit was allowed to be taken alive.”

Acknowledging that all wars are violent, Gifford said he was nonetheless “genuinely shocked” by what he saw fighting against Russia.

Learning from ISIS

Gifford believes that Russian forces learned many of their more brutal tactics in Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave military support to Syria’s then-president, Bashar Assad, starting in 2015, supplying military equipment and air strikes to push back rebel groups, including the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

But it’s the jihadist group that appears to have provided a model for Russian troops in Ukraine, Gifford said.

The “level and scope” of Russia’s barbarity on civilians, he said, reminded him “of the same tactics that the Islamic State used.”

Gifford recalled how, during his time fighting in Syria, he would find cages, torture instruments, and mattresses with chains next to them for holding female captives in Islamic State-controlled areas.

“I thought that the Islamic State was a fringe, that it was a unique thing,” he said, but in his view, “many of their brutal practices have been adopted by Russia — mainly, I suppose, because they were so effective in Syria,” he added.

Russia’s war machine

Gifford described Russia’s war machine as “incredibly big and incredibly dangerous.”

But while Russia leads in scale — its army is on track to grow to 1.5 million active troops — its forces have been “decimated” in Ukraine, he said.

Russia’s approach to war is about scale and “meat wave” attacks in which astonishing numbers of casualties are tolerated, Gifford said.

The “real differences” between the countries come down to “the way they value life,” he added. “The Ukrainians are fighting for their lives. Russia is just fighting for more territory, and that’s the difference.”

But Gifford stressed that Ukraine’s allies need to stop seeing the war as “a conflict on the edge of Europe,” and that for Putin it means much more.

For him, it’s “a war of annihilation,” Gifford said. It’s “the war to end all wars in the eyes of Vladimir Putin.”

Russia has routinely denied allegations of war crimes. The Russian Ministry of Defence didn’t respond to a request for comment.