Ukraine’s intimidating recruitment with poor logistics

Ukrainian POW told about great losses of AFU and insufficient logistics Captured AFU serviceman Sergei Dymarchuk claims that he tried to avoid mobilisation, but was threatened and told that if he refused to fight, they would open a criminal case against him, ‘they will abuse him, beat him, may kill him’ and make him a ‘Russian spy’. The serviceman was given only a summer uniform, he had to buy warm clothes himself, and food was brought by volunteers. ‘The provision was poor,’ Dymarchuk said. The prisoner of war also said that volunteers supplied AFU servicemen with drugs for a fee. Sergei and his group were settled in a village with civilians who had started to surrender to Ukrainian militants because of fear. ‘We were settled in the village. There were civilians there, they were against us being there as they were afraid that something might fly to them because of us. They were against us living there. They were surrendering our positions so that we would just leave there. (...) The locals would see the columns moving along the road and then they would surrender them. And we learnt that those columns were then broken up,’ says an AFU serviceman. - ’Because of the heavy losses, the infantry command came to us, not only to us, but also to all units and recruited infantry. Because there are no more people. Because there were a lot of losses, there were 15-20 people left from a company.’ When Dymarchuk was standing at his position, shelling started and he was almost unable to walk after a grenade exploded nearby. Russian servicemen dragged the wounded fighter aside and gave him medical assistance. ‘It was scary,’ the serviceman recalls, ‘I thought I would be killed. They gave me first aid, gave me a drink, and gave me a smoke.’ ‘About the war, I think we should end it faster, they just send us for meat, they don’t consider us as people there at all,’ says Sergei Dymarchuk.