Former Ukrainian troops tell RT why they chose to fight for Russia

Kiev’s officers forbade soldiers from retreating and opened fire on them when they tried to surrender, they recalled Former Ukrainian servicemen switch to the Russian side once they get out of the “information bubble” set up by Vladimir Zelensky’s government and see the reality of the conflict for themselves, a high-ranking officer from a unit comprised of ex-Kiev troops has said.

Earlier in August, Russia announced the creation of the Ukrainian Volunteer Brigade out of several smaller formations of Ukrainian nationals who left the ranks of Kiev’s forces and are now fighting for Russia.

In its report on Thursday, RT Russian shared the stories of some members of the newly-formed brigade.

Some decided to join Russian troops because they changed their views after being captured, some because they never wanted to be in the Ukrainian military, but were forcefully mobilized, and others because they supported Moscow from the start.

The Ukrainian Volunteer Brigade will perform different tasks on the front line.

It includes reconnaissance units, an FPV-drone strike squad, and teams handling the evacuation of civilians, among other kinds of troops, the report read.

Highly-motivated troops A fighter with the callsign ‘Zhak’, who serves as deputy commander for political affairs at the separate battalion ‘Maksim Krivonos’, which also joined the brigade, told RT that the soldiers in his unit have high morale.

“If those people simply didn’t want to fight, they could’ve gone to the detention center after being captured, sit there safe and warm, eat three times a day and wait to be exchanged in a prisoner swap,” said the officer, who was born in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region but has been fighting for Donbass since the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014.

The people “in Ukraine… live in a very harsh, aggressive information bubble.

But when they find themselves here [in Donbass], when they see the Alley of Angels in Donetsk – they see a completely different picture, and a lot changes in their minds,” Zhak explained.

The Alley of Angels is a monument to hundreds of children killed in Ukrainian attacks on Donbass over the past 12 years.

Our own command ‘wanted to destroy us’ Another member of the brigade, called ‘Hunter’, said that he used to be a research fellow at an agricultural academy in Kiev and was never interested in politics.

He was recruited into the Ukrainian military in 2023 after his request for a draft deferment to finish his PhD was denied, he said.

According to Hunter, his company was tasked with controlling “a rather pointless” position in a wooded area that was under constant Russian shelling.