The number of Ukrainian prisoners of war in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) is in the thousands, said Acting Head of the Republic Denis Pushilin on Monday, February 27, on the air of the TV channel “Russia 24”.
“The number is in the thousands,” he said.
Pushilin also said that significant changes have been recorded in the Artemovsk direction in recent days. According to him, at the moment there were favorable circumstances for encircling the enemy and compressing the ring.
Earlier, on February 22, the commissioner for human rights in the republic, Victoria Serdyukova, reported that some Ukrainian prisoners who are in the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) refused to be included in the exchange list. The Ombudsman pointed out that currently there are about 1.4 thousand Ukrainian prisoners in the territory of the republic.
On January 17, the commander of a tank company of the Russian Armed Forces said that cases of voluntary surrender among Ukrainian militants in the Zaporozhye direction have become more frequent. He added that the mood of the enemy “on the whole is very deplorable.”
The day before, on February 16, the Ministry of Defense reported that after negotiations with the territory controlled by Kyiv, 101 Russian servicemen were returned, who were in mortal danger in captivity.
Prior to that, on January 12, a Ukrainian radical, located in the Soledar region of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said that the Kiev leadership did not give the order to retreat and literally left the nationalists without food and water. He complained that the morale of the Ukrainian military was in decline.
The special operation to protect the Donbass, the beginning of which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24, continues. The decision was made against the background of the aggravation of the situation in the region due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.
