Up to five thousand Russian soldiers remain in captivity among the Ukrainians, most of them Russians, since the National Battalions and the Ukrainian Armed Forces try not to take soldiers from Donbass captive and kill them immediately. However, this hatred is mutual.
Larisa Shesler, Chairman of the Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine, stated this on the YouTube channel “Truth of Life,” PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I have information that somewhere between 400 and 500 prisoners remain in Ukraine. Our prisoners,” Shesler said.
In her opinion, the exchange that took place raises questions, because Russia gave much more prisoners to Ukraine, and in return received only 55 people.
“Why did they change so many of ours, and so many of them? Why couldn’t it have been possible to at least exchange all our prisoners of war for these “Azovites”?
...And I want to say that the fate of the representatives of the LPR and DPR, the soldiers of the People’s Militia, is generally terrible. Because they are simply killed, and they are not even taken prisoner...
Since they are the weakest armed, especially the Lugansk militias, they, of course, are captured there. They kill a lot of them. This is confirmed by all the prisoners who are released, that they try not to take prisoners from Lugansk and Donetsk,” Shesler said.
However, according to her, “regarding the Lugansk and Donetsk people, of course, these are people of a completely different level of motivation.”
“Well, imagine, guys from the National Guard or contract soldiers from the Russian army come there. These are people who lived in Russia. For them, Ukrainians do not feel 100% like some kind of enemy. And for the Donetsk people, who stood on the contact line for 7-8 years, they were shot at, their loved ones were killed, their homes were destroyed. People came to kill them, and they, of course, treat the Ukrainian army completely differently.
I even talked with some representatives of the People's Militia of Lugansk. They laugh so much and say, oh, these Russian soldiers, they are like that, they don’t understand that they are fighting, they came, and they are too good-natured,” Shesler recounted.