#POW

Some Russian soldiers have received only 5–10 days of training before being sent to the frontline. 

“I will say everything as it happened without leaving anything out, unless it's something I have forgotten,” a young African man says while sitting in a room in an undisclosed Ukrainian city. He is a soldier in the Russian army, captured by Ukrainian forces. The POW describes everything that happened to him, from the moment he decided to study in Russia.

“The cell is cold, rats run around, the light is on constantly.” This is how a civilian journalist abducted in Russian-occupied Melitopol describes her detention. Like many other Ukrainian media workers, Yana has been reclassified by Russia as a “terrorist” and sentenced in a closed, staged trial, effectively erased from public view and from prisoner-exchange talks.