“If you don’t want to be sent to the front line, you pay your commander out of your own pocket — and he makes sure you’re not sent there,” he said.
He claimed that he surrendered because of “horrific” losses on the battlefront and rampant corruption among unit commanders.
Ukrainian troops who refused to fight were beaten — and in some cases, executed, he noted.
The POW also claimed that Ukrainian artillery shelled several homes with civilians inside in a village in the Donetsk People’s Republic.