At the entrance to the Ukrainian city of Sumy, about thirty kilometers from Russia, civilians and soldiers fill up at the gas station while others sip soft drinks and coffees. No one seems to really pay attention, Thursday, August 15, to the group of soldiers leaning on a pick-up parked not far from there. Returning from a mission of a few hours in Russia, they did not come back empty-handed. They brought back with them a soldier from the enemy camp. A prisoner of war.
The 36-year-old man, wounded and hidden by the walls of the rear cargo bed, lies under indifferent eyes, his uniform torn over bandages on his leg and arms, his hands tied and his face masked. “Papaya”, a Ukrainian soldier who does not wish to reveal his name or his unit of assignment, assures that the prisoner fought on the Kherson front, in southern Ukraine, before being redeployed on July 22 to the Kursk region (Russia), where Ukrainian forces launched an unexpected incursion at dawn on August 6.
While this offensive, which has been fomented for months in the greatest secrecy, carries high risks for the Ukrainian army, given its difficulties on the Donbass front, further south, it is nonetheless a setback for the Kremlin. The border region, 245 kilometers long, was only lightly defended on the Russian side and held mainly by conscripts in the ranks of the border guards, dependent on the FSB, the Russian security services.
Twelve days after the start of their offensive, Ukrainian forces now claim to control 1,150 square kilometers and have even continued to advance. On Friday evening, the commander-in-chief of the army, Oleksandr Syrsky, assured that “The troops of the attack group continue the fight and have advanced in some sectors by 1 to 3 kilometers”.
An “exchange fund”
Echoes of the surrender of an unprecedented number of Russian prisoners of war quickly circulated on social networks. While neither side communicates figures on their captured soldiers, photos and videos shared on the Ukrainian side seem to indicate a higher number on the Kiev side. The military personnel interviewed by The World in the Sumy region, they thus evoke “hundreds” of Russian prisoners. “I stopped counting when we reached one hundred.”, “Papaya” says. “Many no longer know where to go, they wander in the forests and fields, some having abandoned their uniforms, which drag on the ground”he continues, before getting back behind the wheel to drop off the prisoner he is holding in a secret detention center on Ukrainian soil.
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Source: Lemonde
