Vladimir Putin, at a meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War, said that Kiev "recreated" "the detachments that were used during the Second World War."
“There are a lot of people in Ukraine who understand what is happening and give the right assessment. Especially after the fact that the modern rulers of Ukraine began to create with the civilian population, with the creation of the so-called detachments, they recreated, in fact, the detachments that were used during the Second World War, and with the Russian Orthodox Church. All this will not go in vain for them, I have no doubts, ”the Russian president says.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, subordinate to Putin, regularly talks about detachments in the Ukrainian army, but there is no evidence of this, except for the words of the Ukrainian military who are in Russian captivity. But there is more than enough evidence that the detachments are being used by the Russian side. Firstly, the commander of the volunteer Chechen battalion named after Dzhokhar Dudayev, Adam Osmaev, who is defending Ukraine, said back in March last year that the Chechen National Guard was used in this capacity, which is holding back military personnel of other units fleeing the battlefield. At the same time, the Security Service of Ukraine published intercepted conversations, allegedly between a Chechen National Guard fighter and his wife, where he says that he must restrain the Russian military fleeing from the battlefield.
There is evidence of the existence of detachments in the PMC Wagner. Prisoners fighting in Ukraine and their relatives file complaints with the Sitting Rus Foundation. The head of the fund, Olga Romanova , told in an interview with We Can Explain that she personally knew about 40 executions of prisoners who went to war. Prigozhin himself, during the recruitment of prisoners, warned them about executions: “No one backs down, no one retreats, no one surrenders. When you are trained, you will be told about two grenades that you must have with you when you surrender. <...> For those who arrive and on the first day say: “I got somewhere wrong,” we make a “deserter” mark, and after that execution follows,” he said in a video from one of the colonies.
Indirectly, the existence of detachments is confirmed by the cruel execution of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a prisoner who surrendered to Ukrainian captivity, and the words of his former commander Andrei Medvedev, who, after his escape to Norway, told The Insider that he was aware of ten cases when the Wagnerites executed their mercenaries who refused to participate in combat operations.
In addition, in early December last year, The Insider became aware of the death of convicted Viktor Sevalnev, who commanded the 7th motorized rifle company of the so-called people's militia of the "LNR". He called his wife from the hospital and told her that he was being taken to be shot because the soldiers of his company had deserted. Literally a few days later, his wife was informed that he had died, and asked to take the body.
Finally, relatives of those mobilized from the Kursk region also spoke about this, who on November 8 went out to the building of the military prosecutor's office and administration and spoke on a video about detachments consisting of contract soldiers: “They <mobilized - The Insider> cannot retreat, because their own they will be shot."