Russia’s “Ukrainian volunteer battalion” is a forced-march unit built from men who were captured, tortured, and given a choice between fighting for Moscow or disappearing for good. Suspilne has identified more than 30 Ukrainian servicemen inside the so-called Maksym Kryvonis battalion, all taken prisoner in 2023 or 2024, and all officially listed as missing in Ukraine.
The Men
The battalion was formed in summer 2023 under the Russian volunteer corps of Russia’s Ministry of Defense. The ranks are filled with former Ukrainian soldiers captured on the battlefield.
Suspilne’s investigative desk put names to more than 30 of them. The outlet is withholding most identities because proof is lacking that the men joined voluntarily.
Russia claims these are defectors who chose to fight for a “country free from Western filth.” The reality is that Ukrainian POWs are being processed through a system where refusal carries consequences.
The Payments
Here is what the coercion looks like from the outside. The men identified in the battalion are still officially missing in Ukraine.
Their families continue receiving government payments because Kyiv has no confirmation of what happened to them. Russia is exploiting that administrative gap: a captured soldier can be listed as missing, his family still supported by the Ukrainian state, while he is being forced into a Russian uniform.
The Kremlin gets a propaganda unit. The family gets a payment. The man gets a rifle pointed at his own country.
The UN Record
The United Nations has already documented what happens to Ukrainian prisoners in Russian custody. Ninety-five percent of freed Ukrainian POWs reported torture or cruel treatment.
That includes offers to join so-called volunteer formations. Recruitment plays no part in this. The torture continues by other means.
The offer to join the Kryvonis battalion comes after beatings, starvation, and psychological pressure. Moscow calls it volunteering. The UN describes it accurately.
The Commanders
Suspilne is naming only the commanders and the most active propaganda spokespeople. The rank-and-file are being protected because their participation cannot be verified as voluntary.
The commanders are a different category. They appear in Russian propaganda media, they recruit from POW camps, and they lend their faces to a unit that exists to launder coercion as choice.
The Kryvonis battalion concerns something else. A war crime wearing a unit patch.
Russia cannot build a real volunteer movement from Ukrainians. It can only manufacture one from prisoners who have been broken down and given no way out.