WAR IN UKRAINE
Inside the PoW camp where Ukraine ‘re-educates’ Russians
Captured soldiers, many ex-prisoners, are being ‘deprogrammed’ in preparation for repatriation at a Ukrainian camp
Prisoners of war work six days a week for $8 a month, which they can use to buy Coca-Cola, which has not been available in Russia since the war started
YAKIV LIASHENKO/EPA
He may not like it, but it is for his benefit, say officials at the camp for Russian prisoners of war. When he signed up to fight in July, Nikolai, 39, from Primorsk, did so in the belief that Russians and Ukrainians were one people being torn apart by a perfidious Nato.
Today, Nikolai wakes up at 6am to the sound of the Ukrainian national anthem playing out over the loudspeaker in his bunk room. After breakfast, he observes a minute’s silence for those killed as a result of Russia’s invasion.
“I grew up in the Soviet Union so I feel that we are one country,” he said, sitting in the camp’s sick bay where he is recovering from a bullet wound in his arm.
