Thirteen years in prison for refusing to go to war with Ukraine - Russian POW

Ukraine's security service released a video of a Russian invader claiming some Russian servicemen had been sentenced to 13 years in prison for refusing to deploy in Ukraine.

That’s according to the SBU press service, Ukrinform reports.

Another Russian ‘trainee’ who ‘didn’t know’ he was going to war in Ukraine… On February 24, he crossed our state border and set off from Crimea for Huliaipole (Zaporizhia region - ed.). He says some of his comrades, realizing that they were participants in the war, not a ‘special operation,’ intended to refuse and have even drafted the relevant reports. But their senior came and said that there’s no war there and that they just have to move in…" said the statement.

According to the SBU, the POW’s unit, despite never having made it to the front line, got annihilated by the Ukrainian forces: "Of the 30 servicemen who arrived, only nine survived."

"The soldier says there were conscripts among them, who had signed their contract only a week prior to the start of hostilities. Those who refused to go to war were sentenced to 13 years in prison. Like all POWs, the said soldier says he didn’t kill anyone and doesn’t know even know how to use an automatic rifle," the SBU said.

The truth is to be established by investigators and counterintelligence operatives. "No invader will go unpunished!" stressed the Security Service of Ukraine.