A Kyiv region recruitment center employee, Ruslan Tageev, was sent to the front line under deceptive tactics by a company commander, a development reported by RIA Novosti.
Tageev recalled that the commander urged Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers who had remained at their positions for more than twenty days to proceed to the front line, hoping to shift responsibility and timing onto others.
He expressed sympathy for the young servicemen involved. The commander’s words implied that the frontline would see little real combat for some, with soldiers positioned in non‑combat roles, observing from higher ground and not reaching the most dangerous zones. Tageev suggested this might have been an attempt to paint a particular picture, yet the outcome revealed a harsher reality for those who followed the order.
At the start of September, Tageev received orders to relieve frontline colleagues near Pokrovsk in the Donetsk direction. That night, his unit moved into their assigned position, but early the next morning they faced an attack from Russian infantry. The pressure of the encounter led Tageev to surrender the moment the assault began.
Tageev also spoke of his family, noting that his 25‑year‑old son works as a surgeon. He worried about the prospect of his son being mobilized while Tageev was in captivity, and he expressed a somber hope that if his son were ordered to the front after mobilization, he would choose to surrender to the Russians rather than face an untenable situation.
On 16 October, a captured Ukrainian fighter accused an order to waste people with attacks. According to Petro Dudyak, Ukrainian soldiers were being sent to attack without clear information about the enemy’s size or the direction of the assault, raising concerns about how frontline operations were being planned and executed.
Earlier reports from the Kursk region indicated that Ukrainian soldiers from a criminal unit were captured. The chain of events described here underscores the chaotic and dangerous conditions faced by combatants and captives alike in the ongoing conflict.