‘I was a prisoner of war. Russia traded me on the black market’
Russian forces are operating a black market of prisoners of war, Ukrainian authorities have told The Times.
Petro Yatsenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s co-ordination headquarters for the treatment of PoWs, said that Chechen paramilitary groups were actively buying up captured Ukrainians from other Russian military factions.
“There have been cases where they bought our wounded from the Russian army, took them to [the Chechen capital of] Grozny, and then exchanged them for their own,” he said.
Though there is no specific article in the Geneva Convention prohibiting the trade of PoWs, the practice is likely to contravene the treaty, which broadly states that “no special agreement shall adversely affect the situation of prisoners of war”.
More than 10,000 Kadyrovites — soldiers loyal to the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov — are thought to have crossed into Ukraine.
Having been involved in heavy fighting around Mariupol, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in the early months of the war, their involvement has since largely been limited to policing and logistics operations at a remove from the front line.
Vyacheslav Levytskiy was captured after being shot in both legs while fighting near Avdiivka. He was then sold to the Chechens
They are therefore now less able to capture enemy soldiers themselves, a possible explanation as to why they are buying prisoners who can then be exchanged for Chechens languishing in Ukrainian PoWs camps.
Vyacheslav Levytskiy, 41, was captured by so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) militias in February 2023 and was subsequently sold to the Chechens.
He had been shot in both legs and the abdomen during a nighttime raid on his position in a dugout in the forests to the north of Avdiivka. When he regained consciousness the following day he was alone and spent several days crawling across the frozen earth searching for the rest of his unit.
Eventually he arrived at a Ukrainian position but found that it had been seized by the enemy. He said his DPR captors provided him with no medical treatment, and beat him with a spade in the hope of forcing him to reveal the wavelength used by Ukrainian military radio operators.
Ukrainian PoWs after a swap last April
Two days later however he was taken to a Chechen position several miles from the front and told he was going to Grozny.
Kadyrovites have a reputation for ill-discipline and civilian brutality, and so it was a surprise to Levytskiy — who before signing up to fight a month after the invasion had worked as a driver and mechanic in Podilsk, a city in the Odesa region — that he was treated with relative kindness by his new captors.
As soon as he arrived in the Chechen capital he was taken to a hospital where both of his legs were amputated, one above the knee and the other below. Both of his hands, which had gone untreated for frostbite for several days, were also removed.
Following his recuperation in hospital, he was taken to a basement where he was held with 60 other Ukrainian prisoners being readied for an exchange with five Chechens. In June 2023 he returned home as part of an exchange with 39 other Ukrainians.
Relatives and friends of Ukrainian prisoners of war from the Azov Brigade and sub-units hold a rally in Kyiv on Sunday calling for their exchange with Russian prisoners
To date over 2,700 Ukrainian prisoners have been returned in exchanges. Ukrainian authorities do not disclose how many Russians have been returned and the number in custody.
More than 4,000 Ukrainian service personnel are believed to remain in captivity in Russia as PoWs, but the precise numbers on the Ukrainian and Russian sides remain unknown as the military of neither country discloses this data.
Of his fair treatment, Levytskiy said that he believed his captors’ goodwill stemmed from a natural sympathy for Ukraine’s plight tacitly held by many Chechens, who too have been the subject of Russian colonisation and repression.
Moscow prosecuted two wars against the mountain republic during the 1990s and early 2000s, in the course of which Grozny was reduced to rubble.
President Putin with Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, in Moscow in September
Kadyrov’s father Akhmad had been a separatist leader but switched sides during the second Chechen war and pledged allegiance to the Kremlin, for which he and his son were rewarded by being installed as the Moscow-backed head of the republic.
Speaking at a rehabilitation centre near Lviv, where he is learning how to walk with prosthetics, Levytskiy said: “They never beat me. They gave me a wheelchair. When I left we even hugged and took a picture together. One Chechen commander said to me: ‘Once you guys beat off the Russians we will do the same.’”
Many of those held in Russian captivity have, however, spoken of far worse treatment.
A UN report published last year found that 92 per cent of the 200 Ukrainian PoWs interviewed had been tortured or ill-treated to extract military information, to intimidate or humiliate them, or as a form of retribution. The figure for Russian PoWs interviewed was 49 per cent.
Forms of torture by Russian captors included beating, electrocution, or in several cases, being shot or stabbed in the legs.
“More than 90 per cent of prisoners of war whom we interview after their return say that they were subjected to torture, deprivation of sufficient nutrition and sleep,” Yatsenko said last December.
“People are being forced to burn out tattoos or to consume only Russian propaganda. They are not allowed to communicate with relatives.”
Additional reporting Viktoria Sybir.