Russia ‘sends captured Ukrainian fighters to battle Kyiv’s troops’
Russia is dispatching Ukrainian prisoners of war to the front to fight on Moscow’s side, it has been alleged.
Ria Novosti, the Russian state news agency, claimed that the men were volunteers who had formed the new Bogdan Khmelnitsky Battalion, named after a 17th century Ukrainian Cossack leader.
But human rights campaigners said the PoWs may have been coerced into fighting against their own country.
The battalion was said to have become part of a larger military unit named Kaskad, based in the self-proclaimed, pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine.
That unit has previously been described by VKCh-OGPU, a popular Russian blog, as a “cronies detachment” in which Russian politicians and their relatives can serve to acquire patriotic credentials while rarely participating in
