Petro Yatsenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s headquarters for the coordination of POWs, told the paper that it was being run by groups of Chechens, the ethnic group from southern Russia.
The Chechens were buying the POWs from other Russian forces in order to use them in prisoner exchanges for their own troops, he said.
“There have been cases where they bought our wounded from the Russian army, took them to Grozny, and then exchanged them for their own,” he told the paper. Grozny is the Chechen capital.
Chechen forces, under the leadership of warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, have been fighting on the Russian side in Ukraine throughout the full-scale invasion.
However, according to The Times, in recent months they’ve increasingly been engaged in operations further from the front lines, giving them fewer opportunities to capture their own prisoners and conduct their own exchanges.
One Ukrainian soldier, 41-year-old Vyacheslav Levytskiy, told the paper of his capture in the Donetsk region in February last year and his subsequent sale to Chechens.
Levytskiy was captured after a battle near Avdiivka by soldiers of the Donetsk People’s Republic, an occupied region of Ukraine.
Those captors denied him medical treatment for his wounded legs and abdomen, and beat him in an attempt to get him to reveal sensitive information, the paper reported.
The Geneva Conventions require the humane treatment of all prisoners of war, but are less clear on trading prisoners.
Soon, Levytskiy was taken to Grozny, where he recuperated and, in June 2023, was part of a group exchange of Ukrainian prisoners for Chechen ones, the paper reported.
Chechen forces have a reputation for ferocity — an image the Kremlin has sought to amplify in order to instill fear in Ukrainians.
To Levytskiy’s surprise, his Chechen captors treated him relatively well, giving him prompt medical treatment, the paper reported.
But, since his injuries had earlier gone untreated, this still involved amputating his injured leg, as well as both his hands, the paper reported.
An estimated 4,000 Ukrainian combatants have been taken prisoner by Russian forces, The Guardian reported. As of August last year, more than 2,500 Ukrainians had been involved in prisoner swaps, the paper reported.
