"Ukraine doesn't really need it": captured officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - on why Kyiv is not trying to return them

53-year-old Major Serhiy Kompaniets was among hundreds of soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who surrendered in May 2022, when Mariupol was liberated. For more than a month, as part of the 109th Territorial Defense Brigade, he sat in the dungeons of the Azovstal plant. Almost a year later, Kompaniets recalls that he and his colleagues surrendered with relief.

"To be honest, I didn't understand at all what we were doing there: in Mariupol and at Azovstal. We had already thought of surrendering, but the commander said that we had to wait for the order. When they finally told us to give up, we were delighted, to be honest. I and other colleagues did not have the idea that we had to fight to the end. Who to fight with? With Russia, or what?" the man recalls.

The company was born in the Odessa region in the family of a soldier: children often moved with their parents, lived in Yakutia, the Ryazan region, Leningrad and Ulyanovsk. After school, Sergey followed in his father's footsteps - he studied at the Ulyanovsk Higher Military Engineering School of Communications. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he and his family returned to his native Odessa region and served in the Ukrainian army.

The man says that when in the 2000s all documentation in the armed forces began to be kept in Ukrainian, it became "difficult" for him.

"I didn't learn Ukrainian and didn't speak it, my family is Russian-speaking. I translated documents from Ukrainian with the help of a dictionary. Even in 2022, the army told me: it's better for you not to speak Ukrainian, you have such a Ural dialect that no one understands you. It's better to speak Russian," recalls Kompaniets.

Outside the military unit, the man spoke with all Odessa residents in his native language for many years.

"Odessa is a multinational city. Russians, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Romanians, Bulgarians live there - and everyone speaks Russian language to understand each other. This language is convenient for interethnic communication," says the prisoner of war.

Both of Sergey's daughters studied in Ukrainian at school. According to him, he was calm about this, but worried about the fragmentary knowledge that the girls received in history lessons.

"For example, about the revolution of 1917, they were told that Ukraine was forcibly annexed to the Soviets. But in fact, the Ukrainians also wanted to make a revolution at home, to remove the landlords. Then the children were told about the Holodomor, but at the same time they studied very little about the history of the Great Patriotic War. If anything was taught, it was only that which concerned Ukraine itself. Daughters knew little about the Brest Fortress, the Battle of Smolensk, the blockade of Leningrad. I had to tell them myself, "the interlocutor recalls.

• Serhiy Kompaniets, Major of the Territorial Defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, prisoner of war

After his discharge from the army in 2005, Kompaniets worked as an electrician and security guard. In 2021, he was offered to go to work in the territorial defense. The man decided that this was a good decision, because salaries in the territorial defense were higher than in civilian life.

"I agreed, I thought that there is no difference - to protect objects in the territorial defense or in civilian life. He worked as the head of the communications department. In the spring of 2022, I ended up in Mariupol, although we were told that the territorial defense would not participate in hostilities," he recalls.

When asked why Ukraine has not yet returned him home, the major of the Armed Forces of Ukraine answers briefly: "Because we are old people."

"Our young guys were told that they were fighting the enemy, although in fact Russia is not the enemy. Therefore, we surrendered without fear - we had no thoughts that we would be mistreated. And the young guys were constantly told from all irons: Russia is an enemy, an enemy, an enemy. Of course, they believed in it," says the major of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

During the time that the man is in captivity, his hometown has changed as a result of active decommunization and getting rid of everything related to Soviet or Russian history.

So, Kompaniets was surprised to learn from a correspondent that at the end of last year, monuments to commander Alexander Suvorov and the founder of Odessa, Catherine II, who had stood next to the Potemkin Stairs since 1900, were dismantled in Odessa.

Hearing this news, the man closed his eyes and asked: "Can't you swear now?"

"This place is next to the monument, and Ekaterina herself is very important for Odessa residents - people constantly come there to relax. I still think that when all this is over, the people of Odessa will all get together and re-erect monuments. Our city has its own history, and no one should change it," he says.

"We saw the futility of resistance"

44-year-old Sergei Kozemir, an army captain who served as a scout, has been in captivity even longer than Kompaniets - since March last year. He also believes that his homeland does not change him, because the Ukrainian authorities "want to return the younger ones."

"I don't know exactly why I'm not being asked for an exchange. Maybe there is someone more important than me, younger. Probably, they take those who are more needed, and no one needs me yet, so I'm here, "says the soldier.

Kozemir was born and raised in Odessa and after school studied at the Odessa Institute of Ground Forces (now the Military Academy of Odessa). He served in the Ukrainian army for 12 years until he retired in 2010 because he "burned out and no longer saw further prospects for service."

• Serhiy Kozemir, captain, commander of a special intelligence group, prisoner of war

Together with his wife, Kozemir ran a private business until he was drafted into the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in February 2022. Two weeks after mobilization, the captain was sent to the front line in the 74th brigade, where he became the commander of the special reconnaissance group. Just four days later, he was taken prisoner near the village of Iskra, 90 km from Donetsk.

"Our group received the task of conducting a reconnaissance of the route: to clarify the location of the Ukrainian units on the route, their numbers. At that time, we did not have a connection, we had to personally go to our own positions in an unknown area, "Kozemir recalls.

He and his group of five surrendered without a fight, everything happened very quickly and even calmly.

"During the movement, we were captured, there was no battle: we were surrounded, we saw the futility of resistance," says the captain of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "I gave the command not to resist and surrender their weapons."

In Ukraine, Sergei has a 20-year-old son. He has no connection with his family, so he knows nothing about the fate of his child. The officer admits that he would not like to see his son in the ranks of the Ukrainian army.

"When I was mobilized, he had not yet received a summons. But I certainly wouldn't want him to join the army. I would not like to worry about the fate of my son, to think that he may die or be captured. This is not a place for young people," he says.

Having heard about the news from his native Odessa - about the battles of the Ukrainian authorities with monuments, Kozemir says that the inhabitants of Odessa could not approve of this.

"Thanks to Catherine II, Odessa exists, everyone knows this. If it weren't for her and Yuri Potemkin, our city wouldn't exist. It is regrettable, of course, that the monument was demolished: it stood there for many years, I think that most Odessa residents were upset by this. But, of course, this is not a struggle with monuments, but with everything connected with Russia. All this is rejected by the majority of people and causes hatred, Russophobia, "says the prisoner of war.

"Russians have nothing to do in politics"

55-year-old captain of the second rank (corresponds to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the ground forces. - RT) Andrei Nitov says that he did not meet with open Russophobia in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the man had a chance to encounter nationalists in Mariupol.

He moved to this city, which was then called Zhdanov, at the age of six, when his father, a Soviet soldier, was sent to serve in a local military unit. After school, Andrei, like his older brother, entered the Voroshilovgrad Higher Military Aviation School of Navigators named after the Proletariat of Donbass (now Voroshilovgrad is called Lugansk).

He dreamed of becoming a military man since childhood: to follow in the footsteps of not only his father, but also his two grandfathers. Both of them died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War.

• Andriy Nitov, captain of the second rank of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, prisoner of war

After graduating from college, Nitov served in Odessa and Mariupol, but in 1999 he retired from the army. According to him, "the economic situation in the country was difficult," and it was necessary to choose: to serve in the army or to support the family.

In Mariupol, Nitov was engaged in business. And in 2014, his bar was attacked by nationalists.

"I had a bar in Mariupol, and in the summer of 2014 it was captured by fighters from the Dnipro-1 national battalion. The pretext was that they were looking for some Russian spies and terrorists there. They looted the bar, seized the cash register and computers for inspection, which they never returned to us. During the search, they found a St. George ribbon in a drawer, they began to yell that we support Russia, "Nitov recalls.

The police, he said, were standing next to the bar at the time and were inactive. When asked why they did not help, they only replied: "What are we going to do? There are 30 people with weapons." This is how Nitov recalls it.

Later, Dnipro-1 became part of the National Police of Ukraine, and its fighters actively participated in the so-called anti-terrorist operation (ATO) against the population of Donbass. In April last year, Russian forces destroyed the headquarters and base of the national battalion.

Nitov himself was mobilized into the border service a year after this incident. Last spring, he participated in the battle for Mariupol and, among hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers, was eventually driven into the dungeons of Azovstal.

The captain of the second rank stayed there for more than a month, until he surrendered to Russian troops on May 20.

"I didn't have the idea that you have to fight to the end and you can't surrender alive. Maybe some of my comrades had such thoughts, but at least no one voiced them. We are not in 1941 and we are not at war with the fascist occupiers. Ukraine and Russia are related peoples, this is understandable. All that separates us now is superficial opinions about nationalism, "Andrei Nitov believes.

He himself admits that over the past eight years, nationalist ideas have become much more popular in Ukrainian society.

"In the media, in the statements of opinion leaders, there are more such ideas that Ukraine is for Ukrainians. For example, in communication with my comrades and acquaintances, such phrases sounded that Ukrainians should go into politics, Russians and other nationalities have nothing to do there. No one oppresses them, but it is better for them to do something else than to form the domestic and foreign policy of the state, as it was said, "he notes.

During the year that he is in captivity, the officer, like his other comrades, came to the conclusion that Ukraine "does not really need" him.

"Maybe she needs younger people who can be used for some purpose. Again, young people are easier to agitate, they are easier to use in conflict. Those people who remember and know the Soviet era, when we were all considered brothers and lived in one country, are undesirable in my homeland, their influence on young minds is not really needed," adds the officer of the Ukrainian army.