The Russians are crowded eight or more into each dimly lit cell. They spend their days reading whatever books they can get their hands on, and watching anything on television except news about the war that has landed them in this detention centre on the wrong side of the border they were supposed to defend.
The prisoners are part of the bounty brought by Ukraine’s month-old incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. The brazen offensive has temporarily turned Russia’s 2½-year-old invasion of Ukraine on its head as Ukrainian troops have seized and held about 1,300 square kilometres of Russian territory.
Just as important as the land, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, are the hundreds of Russian soldiers who surrendered. They’ve added to what Mr. Zelensky has called the “exchange fund” for future prisoner swaps that could bring home some of the 6,500 Ukrainians that Russia is believed to be holding prisoner.
Like much about the Russia-Ukraine war – a conflict marked by trench-to-trench fighting and entire cities destroyed by air strikes and artillery fire – the scene in the detention centre in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region could have been torn from one of the darker pages of 20th-century history.
There were 92 Russian POWs housed in the detention centre in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region when The Globe and Mail visited on Sept. 5.
The prisoners sleep on narrow bunk beds, on mattresses just a few centimetres thick, and pass their time reading Russian-language versions of Mark Twain, Alexandre Dumas and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle while waiting for a visit from the Red Cross so they can send letters to their families to let them know that they’re still alive.
Although they’ve been told by Ukrainian prosecutors that they will be able to send letters to their families through the Red Cross – as provided for under the Geneva Conventions, which lay out how prisoners of war should be treated – no one from the organization has visited them since their capture in the first days of the Kursk incursion.
Almost a month later, they fear that their families don’t know whether they are alive or dead. “If I could write to my family, I’d tell them, ‘Don’t worry, I’m currently in captivity, but I’m fine. I’m just waiting for a prisoner exchange,’” said Alyosha, a 35-year-old member of the Russian Border Guards Service and father of two.
“I would like to point out that this is the 21st century and we could just send a video via some neutral messenger so that my wife and children can see that I’m alive and okay.”
Pat Griffiths, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ukraine, said he was not able to comment on individual cases, but that ICRC staff had been able to visit some of those taken prisoner after the Kursk offensive and to send messages home on the prisoners’ behalf.
“We have been able to visit prisoners of war on both sides of this armed conflict,” Mr. Griffiths said. “Is our humanitarian access to prisoners where we want it to be? No. Is it where the Geneva Conventions say it should be? No. We need to be real about the limits. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying to improve our access to prisoners of war.”
The Russian prisoners, housed eight or more in each cell, spend their days reading and watching television on narrow bunk beds at the detention centre. Those injured during the conflict are treated by the facility's medical staff.
Despite the complaints, the Ukrainian military staff who oversee the facility contend that the Geneva Conventions give the Russian prisoners of war so many rights that they are treated better than the Ukrainian convicts who are kept separately in the same detention centre. There were 92 Russian POWs in the facility when The Globe and Mail visited on Thursday.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human-rights ombudsperson, said on Sunday that Ukraine was withdrawing the right of Russian POWs to call home – though they would still be able to send letters through the Red Cross – out of concern over how Ukrainian POWs are being treated in Russian detention.
“More and more often, the Russians kill Ukrainian prisoners of war, as documented not only by international organizations but also by Ukrainian representatives,” he said in televised remarks. “To be honest, we are adjusting a few things.”
Last week, CNN broadcast footage that appeared to show three Ukrainian soldiers being executed by Russian troops after surrendering.
The Globe interviewed Alyosha and two other Russian POWs, members of the same border guards unit, at the detention facility in Ukraine’s Sumy region, where they have been held since Aug. 21. In accordance with the Geneva Conventions, The Globe spoke only to Russian prisoners who agreed to be interviewed, and is not using their real names or showing their faces in photos.
Alyosha and his unit were assigned to defend the Sudzha border crossing between the two countries, but were quickly surrounded by the attacking Ukrainian forces as the offensive began on Aug. 6. They surrendered after a three-day battle that they never expected to fight.
“Everything started when the Ukrainian military came into Kursk from two directions very fast. We didn’t have any idea what to do,” said Kolya, a 28-year-old member of the same border guards unit. He said that the Ukrainians had tanks and other armoured vehicles, while the Russians had only their personal weapons with which to fight back.
Russian border guards Alyosha and Kolya were assigned to defend the Sudzha border crossing when they were surrounded and eventually captured by Ukrainian troops in early August.
“We were surrounded so we had the choice to die under the rubble of our post, or go out and die in battle,” Kolya said, referring to a customs office that was crumpled by Ukrainian fire. He added that many of the Russian troops guarding the Kursk border were recently drafted conscript soldiers, many of whom were teenagers. “We didn’t want them to die.”
Ukraine launched its offensive into Kursk after realizing that the Russian side of the border was defended only by lightly armed border guards and freshly drafted conscripts. Alyosha, Kolya and their cellmates belong to the former group. Alyosha said he joined the border guards in 2013 because it provided a decent paycheque, while Kolya said he was following in the footsteps of his mother, who had also worked as a border guard.
All of the prisoners said they were from the Kursk region, except for Alyosha, who said he was from the western Russian city of Pskov.
Some of the Russian POWs bear the scars of the battle they fought and lost. Sasha, a bearded 35-year-old from the same border guards unit, had his face, arm and leg pierced by shrapnel when a Ukrainian drone struck the post just before the Russians surrendered.
That has left him in the sometimes-awkward care of Vitalii Rudenko, head of the Sumy region prison health service, who acknowledges that he doesn’t enjoy treating wounded Russian soldiers. Dr. Rudenko’s own home in the eastern Kharkiv region was destroyed by Russian missiles early in the war.
Dr. Vitalii Rudenko, head of the Sumy region prison health service, says although he doesn’t enjoy treating wounded Russian soldiers, his animosity doesn't affect the care he provides.
“If you want to say we saw them as demons, it would be true,” Dr. Rudenko said, anger suddenly audible in his previously calm voice. “It’s because of them that I am homeless.”
Dr. Rudenko said his animosity has never affected the treatment he provides. “It’s my job,” he said, shortly after checking Thursday on how Sasha’s wounds were healing. He confessed that he has started to feel sorry for some of the soldiers he has been treating. “I feel pity for them. They are not smart kids. They are zombies who were just doing what they were told.”
Sasha said he had never been to Ukraine – or anywhere outside Russia – until he was captured and brought to the detention facility. He and his colleagues were quick to point out that, as border guards, they are not members of the regular Russian army and played no direct role in the invasion that President Vladimir Putin ordered in February, 2022. (The border guards are attached to Russia’s feared FSB internal security service.)
Sasha, a father of one who recently celebrated a birthday in his cell, said he was initially bewildered by the hostile attitude that nearly all Ukrainians hold toward anyone who has worn a Russian uniform. “For me, it’s very strange that someone can hate an entire people because one of those people killed their brother.”
Sasha and his fellow prisoners of war understand the animosity better now, after weeks of watching Ukrainian television news – which was brought under state control when Mr. Zelensky introduced martial law at the start of the invasion – in their cell.
“It’s like our news, flipped upside down,” Kolya said, referring to the irreconcilable gap between Ukrainian TV and the Kremlin propaganda that they’ve been exposed to their entire adult lives.
Recently, they’ve tried to avoid the news by watching movies and sports instead. “It’s difficult to know what’s true,” Alyosha said.
Medical staff at the detention centre treat the variety of war wounds the captured Russian POWs have sustained during the conflict.
Moscow casts the war as an operation to defend the rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking minority, while Kyiv portrays Russia as waging a genocidal campaign to erase the Ukrainian nation. The men acknowledge that while in Russia they heard little about atrocities such as the 2022 massacre of at least 458 civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
Such incidents have made it hard for their Ukrainian jailors to see their captives as anything but bait to get their own comrades home.
“They are our enemies. There is no compassion towards them because they came on our land,” said Volodymyr, the deputy head of the detention centre. The Globe is not using his last name because it could help Russian forces identify the centre where the POWs are being kept.
“We are just happy they are alive so that we can exchange them for our boys.”