Foreign mercenaries, former prisoners forcibly mobilized by Moscow, young fighters tired by four years of conflict: inside a Ukrainian internment camp, captured Russian soldiers bear witness to the violence of war.
A message with a time, an address to report to and an order not to say anything. High iron doors close behind the journalists of the public television of Italian Switzerland (RSI). This former Soviet penitentiary they were allowed to visit is the largest prison camp for Russian soldiers captured by the Ukrainian army.
The first room is permeated with the smell of blood, mud and kerosene. The new arrivals’ camouflage outfits are piled up, some still riddled with bullets. Then come the showers, the shaving room, then a courtyard surrounded by gray walls and barbed wire. A siren announces the start of the round. The prisoners parade in single file, hands behind their backs, dressed in cobalt blue uniforms.
As a journalist, it is impossible to speak to them without their consent. The Geneva Convention also protects them from any media exposure. After all, they are in the hands of the enemy and will one day have to return to their country.
Within these four walls, Russian prisoners of war wait to be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war. These exchanges have taken place regularly since the start of the invasion. Once back, they will have to resume fighting.
“I only obeyed orders”
Prison camp officials thought no one would admit to fighting. However, this is not the case.
Ivan, 24, is from Rostov. With blue eyes and a proud air, he explains to RSI journalists that he joined because “the homeland ordered it”. When Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “I could have refused, but I didn’t want to say no,” Ivan relates. “The homeland gave the order to go to war in Ukraine, so I went.”
>> Watch RSI’s Falò show on Russian prisoners in Ukraine:
On the question of whether this war can be considered just, the young man replies that “if we attacked, it is because we had the right to do so”. As for the civilians killed and injured. “It’s war, it’s like that,” he trivializes, “many Russians are dying too.” Long silences follow each of his responses.
What did he feel while killing? “I felt bad,” Ivan responds simply. But it is not remorse that pushes him to wish for an end to the war. It’s more like weariness. “After four years, I’m tired of fighting,” he admits. His position regarding the start of the war has evolved: “If there had been the possibility of stopping, I would have done it. But there was none.”
“It’s prison or war”
Sergueï, 31 years old, arrives from Samara prison. A street musician, he made his living mainly from theft. In Russia, getting involved allows you to avoid conviction. However, he was the target of an investigation for serious assault and battery. “It’s prison or war.”
Moscow has not yet decreed the general mobilization of its population, but it has already emptied more than half of its prisons to reconstitute its “expendable units”, those which must be sent to the front line for frontal assaults. Most of the prisoners held in this prison camp belong to these ranks.
Sergueï is the only survivor of his group. “The rumors about the captivity were so terrible that many said it was better to commit suicide,” he explains.
Instead, the detainee said, the Ukrainian soldiers who captured him shared water, bread and cigarettes with him. “We kill each other, but I believe that for most of us, there is no real aggression or personal hatred. We understand that deep down we are at war only because we have been told to do so.”
“The same desperation that drives us to risk our lives at sea brings us here”
Among them, there are also hundreds of foreigners: Congolese, Egyptians, Bangladeshis, Colombians. They are attracted by the high salaries and the promises of passports offered by recruitment campaigns: up to $25,000 upon signing a contract and monthly salaries for front-line soldiers of up to five times the average Russian salary.
“The same despair that pushes us to risk our lives at sea brings us here,” confides an African on condition of anonymity. “A good salary for dying?” exclaims Ruslan, a Belarusian, bitterly.
![Russia is carrying out recruitment campaigns in certain southern countries, luring men with attractive salaries. [RSI]](https://img.rts.ch/info/2026/image/8sek3-29264621.image?mw=1280 "Russia is carrying out recruitment campaigns in certain southern countries, luring men with attractive salaries. [RSI]")
Although many of them are already Russian citizens, these recruits of foreign origin are not part of the regular prisoner exchanges between the two armies. “No one wants them back,” explains Petro Yatsenko of the GUR, the Ukrainian military intelligence service responsible for managing prisoners of war.
The stories from the front are all similar. Drones everywhere, suicide attacks, bodies abandoned in the fields. “It’s not like in the movies,” says a young Egyptian captured after only three days of fighting. “It’s too horrible to tell.”
Original story: Anna Bernasconi, RSI correspondent in Ukraine
Adaptation française: Julien Furrer (RTS)
