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Russia Forms Spetsnaz Brigade from Ukrainian POWs in Violation of Geneva Convention
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Russian military forces have formed a specialized combat brigade composed of Ukrainian prisoners of war and forced defectors, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported on August 6.
This directly violates international law governing the treatment of captives.
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Forcing prisoners into military service builds on documented patterns of severe coercion and physical violence within Russian detention facilities. Ukrainian captives endure systematic torture, deliberate starvation, and mass-casualty events like the 2022 Olenivka barracks explosion as Russian guards attempt to break captive soldiers through physical and psychological abuse.
The Russian Ministry of Defense’s Volunteer Corps announced the establishment of the “first Ukrainian Volunteer Spetsnaz Brigade” by consolidating several irregular formations. According to ISW, the newly created unit merges the Maxim Krivonos and Alexei Berest battalions with the Alexander Matrosov, Martyn Pushkar, and Slobodskoy detachments, all of which reportedly operate with Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) or personnel who allegedly defected to Russian forces.
Russian military bloggers explicitly acknowledged that the new brigade relies on Ukrainian POWs for manpower, underscoring a systematic practice that ISW first documented in November 2022.
Similar coercion tactics were recorded in December 2023, when Russian occupation authorities deployed the “Bogdan Khmelnitsky” battalion—comprised of Ukrainian captives—under the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR) “Kaskad” formation in western Donetsk region.
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The deployment of captive personnel into active combat zones constitutes a direct violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
As ISW emphasized, international humanitarian law strictly prohibits forcing prisoners of war to take part in military operations for the capturing power, specifically forbidding their detention or employment in dangerous conditions where they are exposed to direct combat fire.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is taking measures to penalize Russian officials abusing captured troops. It had previously enacted sanctions against Russian judges who routinely sentence Ukrainian captives on staged charges, while noting that thousands of Ukrainian personnel remain in Russian captivity amid documented systemic abuse.
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