The savage character of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against the Ukrainian people today means not only deadly aerial attacks on their cities, but also a callous contempt for the lives and families of Russian workers and farmers in uniform. They are dying by the thousands as Moscow desperately tries to make small advances in eastern Ukraine.
In May, Moscow and Kyiv carried out the largest prisoner of war exchange since Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. It involved 1,000 captive troops from each side. But the families of many returned Russian soldiers have publicly spoken out to say they never got to see their husbands, brothers, and sons, not even those seriously wounded. Virtually every released POW was thrown straight back into the “meat grinder” at the front.
On July 1, Meduza, a Russian-language news service, ran a report from the independent outlet Okno, which had spoken with relatives of these Russian POWs. They described the utter disregard with which they and their soldier kin are treated by Russian authorities.
Kirill Putintsev, a 23-year-old worker from Borzya, in Russia’s Far East, signed a military contract just over a year ago, looking to get out of serving a prison sentence for theft. Posted to the front, he went missing less than two months later.
“I found out he’d been captured on my own,” Yana, Kirill’s sister, told Okno. After getting no response from the Russian army, she posted a video online. She was helped by Irina Krynina, a Russian woman who collaborates with Ukraine’s Want to Find project. It helps Russian families find out what happened to relatives sent to fight in Ukraine. Eventually she got “good news” confirming her brother was alive.
After Kirill was returned in early May, he wasn’t allowed home — not even for a day. Instead, he was held and interrogated by Putin’s secret police, the FSB. He was told there was no chance of a leave, let alone a medical discharge. “Then they sent him straight back to Ukraine,” Yana said.
“I don’t care if someone [reports me], I’ll speak the truth,” Yana said. “My brother has six shrapnel wounds across his back. His fingers were amputated. And now they’re throwing him back to the front!”
Kirill told Krynina, “He only signed up for the money, and he regretted it immediately. Not a day goes by that he doesn’t regret joining this goddamn war.”
“We fought for 11 months to get him out of captivity, not to send him to die all over again,” his sister said.
“No one wants to go back,” one of Kirill’s fellow soldiers told Okno. “A few were lucky enough to get sent to a hospital. Others were just patched up and sent back. We’ve all been assigned to Unit No. 42038” — a code they use for being sent on suicide meat grinder missions.
Marina, the wife of another captured Russian soldier, Alexey Frolov, made a video that was broadcast on the Telegram channel Mobilizatsiya. She says that although her husband is finally nearing the front of the exchange line, she no longer wants it to happen.
“I don’t want this exchange anymore. It’s like they’re being freed from captivity only to be made slaves again,” she said.
“We, the wives and mothers of POWs, have written to the ombudsman, to the president, begging them to bring these men home after they’re released — not send them back to the slaughter. But all we get is form letters.”
As long as he’s still held in Ukraine, she said, “he’s safe. He says they’re not torturing him, And he’ll stay alive.”