"We have many casualties but they are declared missing to avoid compensation payments. Bodies lay strewn all across the wooded area," he said in a video shared by the Russian Defense Ministry.
Litkin and his fellow Ukrainian soldiers were captured by Russia’s Battlegroup Tsentr near the liberated city of Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called its capture a step toward the republic's liberation.