Russia is forcing Ukrainian prisoners into its own army and starving others while "fattening" a few for show, Andrii Pasternak of the SBU's Joint Center for coordinating the search and release of prisoners says. Ukrainian intelligence also has information about Moscow creating battalions from Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs), UkrInform reports.

As of May 2026, approximately 7,000 Ukrainian service members were held in Russian captivity, while the number of civilian detainees is estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000, according to Vice Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament Olena Kondratiuk.

Russia is forming units from Ukrainian prisoners

Pasternak described the POW battalions as confirmed and monitored.

"We know about such battalions. Together with our colleagues from foreign intelligence and military intelligence, we track and record this. Such facts exist," he stated.

Forcing prisoners of war to serve in the captor's forces is itself a war crime. The Geneva Conventions prohibit compelling a POW to fight against their own country, and turning captured Ukrainian soldiers into Russian units, if confirmed at scale, would be a grave violation on top of the coercion required to make men fight the country they were defending.

Russia feeds up some prisoners and starves others

The coordinator also pointed to a practice of staging appearances before exchanges. Knowing whom it will hand over, Russia brings those prisoners, including civilians, into "normal form" through a process he called "fattening," drawing on testimony from released Ukrainian defenders and returned civilians.

The starvation behind it is deliberate and selective. Pasternak characterized it as an element of torture: some prisoners are deliberately not fed, while others are fed up so they look more or less normal for the swap. Ukraine's negotiators note at every meeting that the two sides' prisoners differ starkly, he added. The returning Ukrainians are almost all very thin, with only a few in decent condition, while the Russian POWs Ukraine hands back are genuinely well-fed.

Russia consolidated several units composed of Ukrainian prisoners of war and alleged defectors into a single brigade and labeled it "volunteer," the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported. The move scales up a practice ISW has tracked since 2022, when Moscow first began pressing captured Ukrainian soldiers into combat formations. ISW assessed the practice as a likely violation of the Geneva Convention, which bars using prisoners of war in military operations.

Moscow merges five POW units into one brigade

Russia's Defense Ministry Volunteer Corps announced on 6 August that it had formed the "first Ukrainian Volunteer Spetsnaz Brigade." The formation absorbed at least five existing units: the "Maksim Krivonos" and "Aleksei Berest" battalions, and the "Aleksandr Matrosov," "Martyn Pushkar," and "Slobodskoy" detachments. Each of these units reportedly drew members from captured Ukrainian soldiers or Ukrainians who allegedly defected to Russia.

The Volunteer Corps framed the new brigade as a formation of willing participants. At least one Russian military blogger, however, openly stated the brigade is composed of Ukrainian prisoners of war. ISW noted the admission as significant.

2023

ISW: Russia officially deploys Ukrainian POWs to front lines

One of the merged units, the Krivonos battalion, previously figured in a Russian propaganda operation. Moscow presented a Polish citizen as a defector to that battalion in 2025. Months later, a court in occupied Luhansk Oblast sentenced the same man to 13 years as a mercenary.

A practice ISW has tracked since 2022

ISW first documented Russia forming combat units from Ukrainian prisoners in November 2022. The most recent confirmed case before this brigade was the Bogdan Khmelnitsky battalion, which operated as part of the DNR interior ministry's Kaskad unit in western Donetsk Oblast starting in December 2023.