Article by: Alya Shandra
A video showing an interrogation of a captured Russian Spetsnaz soldier by the 92nd brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces has emerged on the internet. The video was shared by the Ukrainian MP Boris Filatov on his fb page with a note that he received it from Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline.
During the interrogation done on the hospital bed, GRU sergeant of the 3d Spetsnaz brigade Aleksander Aleksandrov revealed that he had been in the Anti-terrorist operation zone (ATO) since March 6th under the command of his captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev. Noting that he hasn’t been physically coerced to talk, he specified that he is a contract Russian military intelligence serviceman on a mission to observe and report results. He named that there was another group of Russian soldiers that his brigade was working with in the Shchastya area, having arrived on a Ural truck, with two other brigades on an observation mission in the close vicinity, near Raivka and Stanytsia Luhanska. The soldiers of his brigade (commanded by colonel Shchepin and permanently based in Togliatti), a group of 14 men, come to this location for 4-5 days, after that returning to their permanent base in Luhansk. Overall, there are from 6 to 8 groups operating out of Luhansk.
Noting that he doesn’t get information from locals on the side of the separatist-controlled regions, Alexander informed that his brigade contacts the so-called “rebels” but there are no joint operations and they do not tell each other about their missions.
As reported earlier by InformNapalm, two Russian servicemen, captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev and sergeant Aleksandr Aleksandrov, were captured by soldiers of the 5th company after fierce fighting with a Russian diversion reconnaissance group in the vicinity of the town of Shchastya, near the line of separation. Both servicemen are from a Spetsnaz GRU unit from Tolyatti, Samara Oblast, Russia. Three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and three wounded in the battle.
The route from Tolyatti to Shchastya. The territory under control of Russian/separatist forces is in red
The captured Russian soldiers are wounded and are undergoing treatment, the doctor Grigory Maximets posted on his FB page. According to him, the soldiers were patrolling Shchastya being mislead by their leadership, which informed them that the Ukrainian battalion Aidar had left the city.
The Russian Federation continues to deny its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, claiming that Russian nationals fighting alongside the so-called “separatist” forces are not in regular military service of the Russian Federation and that it has not delivered arms or troops into Ukraine’s Donbas region, the conflict in which has taken over 6 000 lives to date.
Translated by: Kirill Mikhailov
Tags: War in the Donbas