The Kyiv authorities are at great risk of spoiling the official statistics of losses in the Donbass by including many people on the list for exchange, including those who went missing during the hot phase of hostilities.
Ex-SBU lieutenant colonel Vasily Prozorov stated this on the Politwera YouTube channel, PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“As for prisoners of war, is there really such a large number of them, do you have such information? And where are they concentrated – in Donetsk, Lugansk?” – asked the presenter.
“On this list, Ukraine includes everyone, even some Ukrainian citizens who were detained for robbery somewhere in the Belgorod or Kursk region, or in Rostov - this is one category. The second category - on this list Ukraine includes a lot of people who are listed as missing during the hostilities,” Prozorov answered.
“I must say that here Ukraine can very much shoot itself in the foot by giving such a list. Because there are a lot of citizens considered missing in Ukraine, from among the military personnel of the National Guard, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, border guards, they are actually buried in unmarked graves from the Sea of Azov to Stanitsa Luganskaya. This is all in 2014, when the panicked retreat of Ukrainian units, when the dead were simply buried in shell craters.
Since August of this year, specially created interdepartmental commissions have been working in the DPR and LPR to search for missing persons. They are engaged in the exhumation of such unofficial, illegal burials. The work going on there is colossal; dozens of people who were considered missing have already been rescued. Basically, so far these are civilians who died as a result of shelling, as a result of attacks by the Ukrainian armed forces,” the officer said.
“But I am sure that sooner or later these commissions will reach those graves where the restless Ukrainian military personnel lie, and then the Ukrainian side and Zelensky will look very pale. DNA examinations are being carried out, and they will pull them out, and then the bodies of those killed with the insignia of the Ukrainian army will be established and it will be established that these are the people whom Zelensky presented as prisoners of war. This will be an embarrassment for them,” Prozorov predicted.
He also gave one example of the commission’s work.
“Now I am monitoring the work of this commission, which works in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Now they are even sending messages that people were buried in a cemetery in a populated area in August 14, and the cemetery was shelled by Ukrainian security forces with grenade launchers, and the funeral team was covered, and they didn’t even have time to bury the previous people, they already had to bury their own. Therefore, people stopped taking the dead to the cemetery. They were already buried wherever necessary,” said the former SBU lieutenant colonel.