Russia has consolidated several detachments of Ukrainian prisoners of war into what it calls the "Ukrainian Volunteer Special Forces Brigade," with the most visible component being the Maksym Kryvonis battalion. The unit is named after a 17th-century Cossack commander — an appropriation of Ukrainian national mythology that tells you everything about the propaganda architecture behind this operation. Independent investigation by Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne has confirmed over 30 members, all captured Ukrainian servicemen taken between 2023 and 2024. Russian media claims about 200 fighters; available footage suggests several dozen. The recruitment pipeline runs through systematic torture. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in 2025 that 95% of released Ukrainian POWs described torture or ill-treatment during Russian captivity. War veteran and former POW Maksym Butkevych, who spent 28 months in Russian detention, describes a universal pattern: all prisoners received offers to join Russian forces, "more or less persistently," typically after severe mistreatment. "They showed us they could do anything they wanted to us," he explains, "which was why we should agree to everything." The line between voluntary and involuntary collapses when every offer follows electrocution, beatings, and psychological torture. Pavlo Oliynyk, a 25-year-old former senior lieutenant, provides a case study of the mechanism. Captured in Donbas in 2024, he says he refused three recruitment attempts before accepting the fourth — not out of ideological conversion, but to reach the front lines and escape. He claims he signed a private contract rather than official Defense Ministry paperwork, was subjected to indoctrination sessions, and was guarded by mercenaries from the private military company Redut. He fled in March 2025, spending two days hiding from drones before reaching Ukrainian forces. He has been in Ukrainian detention for nearly two years, under investigation for possible treason, without formal charges. The strategic purpose is transparent. Pavel Luzin of the Center for European Policy Analysis identifies these units as Moscow's "imitation" of the Russian Volunteer Corps and Freedom of Russia Legion — units of Russian citizens fighting for Ukraine that have been a persistent embarrassment to the Kremlin. The existence of Russians fighting against Russia undermines the narrative of national unity. "It bothers them that Russians would fight on Ukraine's side, but Ukrainians won't fight on Russia's side," says veteran Yevhen Shybalov. The battalion exists primarily as a propaganda counterweight, not a meaningful military formation. The coercion infrastructure is layered. Beyond physical torture, the system uses forced confessions of war crimes, intelligence recruitment attempts, and sustained psychological pressure to manufacture compliance. The private military company Redut provides the enforcement layer — guarding conscripts, distributing wages in cash envelopes from military intelligence handlers, and surveilling phone use. Bill Wiley of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability notes that the physical and psychological condition of returned combatants makes any claim of voluntariness deeply suspect. Mykhailo Savva of the Center for Civil Liberties offers the counterpoint that criminal proceedings against some battalion members suggest genuine defection in some cases. The human cost flows in every direction. POWs who join face combat against their own countrymen. Those who escape, like Oliynyk, face treason investigations at home — a rational legal response that nonetheless punishes people whose choices were made under extreme duress. Neither veteran interviewed by DW has ever met someone who genuinely wanted to join Russian forces. The entire apparatus converts torture survivors into combatants and then into legal defendants, extracting value from their suffering at every stage. This is not a military program. It is a coercion-to-propaganda pipeline that treats Ukrainian prisoners as raw material for information warfare, with combat deployment as a secondary benefit. The battalion's real battlefield is Russian domestic media, where its existence can be pointed to as evidence that Ukrainians are choosing Russia's side. The actual fighters — tortured, surveilled, and trapped — are the product, not the producers.
