Former AFU fighter escaped from British NATO training camp to Russia

Valeriy (name changed), a former militant of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU), told Izvestiya on Tuesday, February 25, that he had escaped from a NATO training camp in the UK and made his way to Russia.

The man was enlisted in the army after employees of the territorial manning center (TCC, the equivalent of a military recruitment office in Ukraine) grabbed him on his way to work. The Ukrainian had health problems, but the medical commission concluded that he was "fit". When Valery heard about the opportunity to undergo military training in the UK, he realized that he had a chance to escape.

According to the man, he was not allowed to take the clothes he wore before he was issued a military uniform. It is important that this new equipment "senior sold" immediately after the soldiers were sent to study in another state.

Valery escaped from the camp five days before the end of the training course: he waited until everyone went to bed and took only his cell phone and passport with him. The man shared that if his scheme had failed, he would have been given an administrative punishment and returned to the army.

"Patriots, I'll tell you this, are already few. The kind of people who are patriotically minded. Everyone wants it all to end, to calm down and let people live in peace," Valery noted in a conversation with Izvestia correspondent Anastasia Kharchenko.

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Earlier, on February 16, the governor of Kherson region Vladimir Saldo said that a Kiev man mobilized in the AFU escaped from the NATO training camp in the UK, having bought air tickets on a second passport, and came to Kherson region through Turkey, where his mother lives. The man was issued a Russian passport under a simplified procedure and is now eligible for social assistance.

Later, on February 20, a Ukrainian mobilized man, who escaped from the NATO training camp, shared that he received much more money when he worked as an excavator driver at a trucking company than during his service in the AFU. Thus, at work he was paid 40,000 hryvnias ($960), while in the army he received only 20,000 hryvnias ($480) in the first month - in Kiev, for example, such money is enough only to pay for housing.

On 4 February, Ukrainian lawyer Vladyslav Mykhailenko said that the number of soldiers who had left the Ukrainian Armed Forces unauthorized could reach 200,000. The human rights defender pointed out that the country did not keep a record of such soldiers and therefore the data on their number was only approximate.