There is a group of men hiding in the woods near Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. They are all men who have served their country for a short time and then been locked up.
A group of 15 soldiers from the 59th Brigade, who are part of the Shkval (wind gust) company, used to be prisoners. They have been convicted of many crimes, but they see their service in defense of Ukraine as a way to make things right and start over without a criminal record.
Prisoners must work for the military until the war is over, but there is a catch. There is also a big financial reason to do it: Based on how much time they spend on the front lines, the Ukrainian defense minister says they get paid between $500 and $4,000 a month.
CNN was the only news organization that could talk to these newly hired prisoners last week, who were held near the important Donbas town of Pokrovsk. As of late, the city has become an important part of the nearly 600-mile line of contact between troops who are desperately short on men and ammo and Russian forces that are constantly moving closer and better equipped.
Vitaly, 41, is one of the new members. He is a father of five and a recovering junkie. For safety reasons, he only wanted to be known by his first name.
Vitaly told CNN that he had been in jail for 10 years for four different crimes, the most recent of which was causing serious bodily harm.
Vitaly says, “My life was crazy,” while sitting on a tree stump. All of us guys in the unit grew up with thieves. He saw a chance, though, when he joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
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“I need to start a new chapter in my life.” My life was a mess. Being useful here and with brothers is better… “and a whole new group of friends,” he said.
After only 21 days of training, he’s been in the pits for three months. Vitaly doesn’t feel bad about joining the army, but he admitted that he didn’t know what to expect.
“It’s fun, but life is hard here…” He said, “I didn’t think it would be this hard.”
As a rifle soldier, your life is especially dangerous, and you are more likely to die than other soldiers. Russian drone attacks and storming trenches are common things that infantry troops have to deal with when they walk across large areas of land.
“He was broken up.” It’s really tough to watch… What are you going to do? You can’t help. “Leave them behind, because half of the man is already gone,” he told them.
The defense ministry started a program in June that lets prisoners join the army in exchange for being freed at the end of the war.
There are, however, strict rules about how inmates can join the army. People who have been convicted of rape or any other form of sexual violence are not allowed to join. More than half of the ex-convicts CNN talked to had been in jail for crimes like robbery or serious bodily harm.
The Shkval company told CNN that they are asking the courts to let murderers join their ranks because they think those prisoners might have the skills they need on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s defense ministry told CNN that 4,650 prisoners, including 31 women, have been freed and are being called up for military service. Vitaly is one of them. There were 5,764 people who said they wanted to serve. The minister did not say how many people were on the front lines at the moment.
The convict-to-combat program and a change to mandatory military service are both efforts to boost the number of Ukrainian soldiers who are struggling after two and a half years of hard war. But people CNN talked to on the front lines said there were problems with the program, like training times that were not consistent and were too short.
They said that these problems, along with a constant lack of workers, make it harder for Ukraine to fight off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invading troops.
Vitaly now wishes he had paid more attention during his short training because life on the front line is harder than most people thought it would be. He thinks it might have helped him get ready for what was to come. “We didn’t pay attention and were stupid.” His words were, “It was wrong of us not to listen or pay attention.”
Keeping the peace
Oleksandr, who is in charge of the company, makes sure that there are no problems with the peace in the unit.
Chief of Vitaly’s company, Oleksandr, is used to working with prisoners. When the war broke out in February 2022, he quit his job as a jail guard. Even though he didn’t want to be, he is now back at his old job, but this time it is on the battlefield.
Oleksandr, who also asked to be known only by his first name, said of the troops, “They see me as a former prison guard, as a brother-in-arms, as a commander. Everyone here lives like a family.” He also said, “I am a psychologist, a father, a mother, everything.”
The 15 prisoners who are already in his unit will be joined by 25 more from the jail where he used to work.
Andriy said that a lot of prisoners, like Vitaly, signed up with the goal of changing.
“A lot of them felt bad about what they did in front of their families.” Their kids know that their dad is in jail because they were told that. “He is no longer a criminal when he joins the military; he is a hero,” Oleksandr said.
Another officer approached CNN while we were with the brigade in Pokrovsk and said that morale was low because the best Western weapons had been sent to the Kursk incursion, troops were not motivated, and both soft-skin and armored vehicles were running out, which made logistics and evacuations more difficult.
The officer, who asked to stay anonymous for security reasons, said that they had turned down troops from a new brigade of newly drafted men because they were not motivated to fight and had low morale.
As Russian forces close in on Pokrovsk, Ukraine’s only chance may be to keep up morale.
When the sun goes down, the streets of the town empty out and the cannon starts firing.
A map from DeepState on September 10 shows that Russian troops are only 8 kilometers (5 miles) away. DeepState is a group with ties to Ukraine’s security services that tracks the progress of Russian forces in Ukraine.
Pokrovsk is an important supply town for the Ukrainian forces in the east that are beating off Russian troops. If it were taken, it would be a big win for Putin, who wants to rule the whole Donetsk region. It’s possible that Ukrainian troops will leave Chasiv Yar and the front line will move closer to the much bigger cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Even though Oleksandr knows it’s a tough job to keep the Russians away, he believes that his troops are better than others.
“The convict subculture is used to making it through.” This means having a lot more physical and moral stamina, as well as smarts and the ability to think logically.
