Ukraine: ‘I was a prisoner of war. Russia traded me on black market’

Russian forces are operating a black market of prisoners of war, the Ukrainian authorities have claimed.

A Ukrainian, wrapped in the national flag, weeps after being freed during a prisoner exchange. Picture: Getty Images

Russian forces are operating a black market of prisoners of war, the Ukrainian authorities have told The Times.

Petro Yatsenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s co-ordination headquarters for the treatment of PoWs, said that Chechen paramilitary groups were buying captured Ukrainians from other Russian military factions.

“There have been cases where they bought our wounded from the Russian army, took them to [the Chechen capital of] Grozny, and then exchanged them for their own,” he said.

More than 10,000 Kadyrovites – soldiers loyal to the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov – are thought to have crossed into Ukraine. Having been involved in heavy fighting around Mariupol and elsewhere in the early months of the war, their involvement has since largely been limited to policing and logistics operations.

Vyacheslav Levytskiy, 41, a driver and mechanic before the war, was captured by Donetsk militias in February 2023 and later sold to the Chechens. He had been shot in both legs and the abdomen during a night raid on his position in a dugout in forests near Avdiivka. When he regained consciousness the following day he was alone and spent several days crawling across the frozen earth searching for the rest of his unit.

Eventually he arrived at a Ukrainian position that had been seized by the enemy. He said his captors beat him with a spade in the hope of forcing him to reveal the wavelength used by Ukrainian radio operators.

Two days later he was taken to a Chechen position several miles from the front and told he was going to Grozny.

He was later taken to a hospital where both his legs were amputated, one above the knee and the other below. His hands, severely frostbitten, were also removed.

In June 2023 he returned home as part of an exchange with 39 other Ukrainians. To date more than 2700 of his countrymen have been returned in similar deals but 4000 more are believed to remain in captivity in Russia.

Mr Levytskiy said he had been treated fairly by the Chechens, probably because they sympathised with Ukraine’s plight, having themselves been subjected to Russian repression: it prosecuted two wars against the mountain republic during the 1990s and early 2000s, in the course of which Grozny was reduced to rubble.

Kadyrov’s father, Akhmad, had been a separatist leader but switched sides during the second Chechen war and pledged allegiance to the Kremlin, for which he and his son were rewarded by being installed as the Moscow-backed head of the republic.

Speaking at a rehabilitation centre near Lviv, where he is learning how to walk with prosthetics, Mr Levytskiy said: “They gave me a wheelchair. When I left we even hugged and took a picture together. One Chechen commander said to me: ‘Once you guys beat off the Russians we will do the same’.”

Many of those held in Russian captivity have spoken of far worse treatment. A UN report last year stated that 92 per cent of the 200 Ukrainian PoWs interviewed had been tortured or ill-treated to extract military information, to intimidate or humiliate them, or as a form of retribution. Forms of torture included beating, electrocution or in several cases being shot or stabbed in the legs.

“More than 90 per cent of prisoners … say that they were subjected to torture, deprivation of nutrition and sleep,” Mr Yatsenko said. “People are being forced to burn out tattoos or to consume only Russian propaganda.”

THE TIMES