Captured AFU soldier told about sending untreated fighters to the frontline

A captured militant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), Viktor Kiba, told on 2 January how he was taken back to the frontline after he had not yet recovered from a serious injury.

According to him, after mobilization, without passing the medical commission, he was taken to a training unit in Vinnitsa region.

"After the training unit we were sent to Donetsk to the second line of defense, during the battle I got a shrapnel in my leg, and I ended up in the hospital. I escaped from the hospital, but on October 3 I was caught again. Then came the buyers of the 59th Brigade - it is the worst brigade of all the worst brigades I know. I so did not want and was afraid to get into it, but I did," - said Kiba.

After that, the AFU prisoner of war decided to surrender to the Russian army to keep himself healthy.

"It is in the 59th brigade that people are like cannon fodder. This is a one-way ticket. I believe that Ukraine was already betrayed when America got involved there," he concluded.

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On January 1, Vitaliy Mykhalenko, a captured AFU fighter, said that employees of the territorial manning centers (TCC, the equivalent of a military recruitment office in Ukraine) drafted a man with autism. He is sedentary, withdrawn and hardly speaks, but the TSC staff assigned him to a field canteen as a cook's assistant.

Last April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose powers expired on May 20, 2024, signed a law on toughening mobilization. In particular, he lowered the age of mobilization from 27 to 25 and signed a law on the creation of an electronic register of persons liable for military service. There are no provisions on demobilization in the documents.

Martial law in the country has been in force since February 2022. At the same time Zelensky signed a decree on general mobilization. Later, the Verkhovna Rada repeatedly extended its effect. Most men between the ages of 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving the country.