Russian conscript tells about border breakthrough and surrender
Date: 2024-08-12 Author: Кирило Загоруйко Categories: WORLD
A Russian conscript captured by Ukrainians told about the first day of the military operation in the Kursk region.
His conversation with Ukrainian blogger Dmitry Karpenko was published on YouTube. 19-year-old Yaroslav was drafted into the army on December 1, 2023. He says that he did not want to go, and he only knew about the war in Ukraine from the Internet - he was not interested in it.
He completed a "young fighter course", spent two months in a military unit, and in March he ended up on the border with Ukraine, where he built dugouts and dug trenches. On the morning of August 6, he was in position. After "arriving" at the stronghold, they were told to go to shelters, but by evening they gave the command "to fight".
The Russian soldier says they were divided into combat cells and waited, but after two hours he was alarmed by a suspicious silence. "I walked through the entire position, looked into every dugout - there was not a single soul. I still don't know where they are. Zero emotions. Zero. Everything, emptiness," he says.
The conscript found his phone and tried unsuccessfully to contact his comrades. Soon he heard footsteps and saw the light of flashlights. "At first I thought ours were coming. I didn't think [the Ukrainian soldiers] would come to us. I shouted: "Who is this? Are these ours?" Silence. They told me to come out with my hands up. I put my machine gun down and went out," he recalls.
Yaroslav says he was captured by two Ukrainian soldiers, he did not resist because "he had no experience." The Russian soldier's mother told the journalist that she had already watched other interviews with Russian prisoners of war.
"What do you want to hear? Have you been in my place? In the place of a mother or father whose son is in captivity? I am aware of the events [in Ukraine]. And what do you want, for me to come with a gun and apologize? Or what? What should I do?" she was indignant.
