“The Russians treated them humanely. Their own command didn’t.”
Ukrainian POWs speak.
Guy Mettan is in the business of turning orthodoxies upside down. His method has always impressed us as superbly effective. He eschews slant or any kind of polemic in favor of what we may call “pane of glass” reporting: He writes only what he sees and leaves what he sees alone to speak for itself. The technique requires discipline, but the correspondent who masters it puts readers on the ground with him or her.
In the second of two reports from Kursk, the Russian region Ukrainians invaded two summers ago, Guy gives us the testimonies of two Ukrainian officers taken prisoner during the August 2024 operation. As he writes, these are deeply moving—not as accounts of dramatic combat but in their very ordinariness, their evocations of the banality of warfare. In the voices of these two soldiers, whom Guy identifies by their noms de guerre, we read of the Ukrainian command’s serial carelessness, incompetence, and craven indifference to those on the front lines. On the other side of things, the Russians—those drunken, torturing, rapacious barbarians—turn out to be humane and compassionate—scrupulous observers, not least, of the Geneva Conventions as these relate to prisoners of war.
Guy also interviewed two farmers who endured the seven-month Ukrainian operation and, as we say, lived to tell about it. Here we have a rare, very rare look at how the invasion actually unfolded in the streets and fields of the Kursk oblast.
We are pleased to continue our Summer Readings with these testimonies. The first of Guy’s two-part reportage from Kursk is here.
—P. L.
Guy Mettan.
KURSK—During my time here I had the opportunity to tour this city and several of the areas invaded by the Ukrainian army in August 2024. I was also invited to meet Russian survivors of the operation and two Ukrainian prisoners of war held in the province. Their testimonies are deeply moving. They paint a picture of this relentless conflict that is at once profoundly human and, at times, profoundly inhuman. Above all, they challenge many of the preconceived ideas about people’s experiences on both sides of the front and how combatants view one another.
Our meetings took place in a disused cultural centre surrounded by trees and tall grass on what appears to have once been a Soviet collective farm and now serves as a detention facility for Ukrainian prisoners. Our smartphones were switched off for security reasons, and it was difficult to know our exact location. The two prisoners, dressed in military uniforms, moved about freely and appeared to be in good physical condition.
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‘Antoniuk,’ the officer who became a blogger.
Vladimir “Antoniuk” was formerly a lieutenant in the Ukrainian army. He was born in 1977 in Dnipropetrovsk, a city under Russian control since July 2025. Antoniuk is married and the father of two teenaged children. In civilian life, he owned a small mechanical engineering business.
This is his story.
I completed my military service in the late 1990s and became one of the youngest lieutenants in the Ukrainian army. I was mobilised in 2014, but I never really saw myself as a soldier. I opposed the operations in Donbas [the Ukrainian regime’s eight-year artillery campaign against other Ukrainians]. From 2022 to 2024, I was left relatively undisturbed because of my work and was not called up. But in the spring of 2024, the recruitment officers from the Territorial Recruitment Centre made it clear that I had only two options: Leave the country or accept mobilisation.
I was treated fairly well and, thanks to personal connections, I was assigned to evacuating wounded soldiers from the front. What I saw there shocked me. The treatment of the soldiers was appalling, and I quickly came into conflict with my commanding officer. We eventually agreed on a three-month officers’ training programme, later extended to four months. In the end, I received one and a half months of training in Ukraine and two and a half months in England.
I had very low expectations of the Ukrainian army but very high expectations of the British army. I was bitterly disappointed. The British had virtually no understanding of modern warfare. I had seen my first drone as early as 2014, yet they knew nothing about drones—how to use them, hide from them, or protect oneself against them. As a result, I was sent to the front without any useful training.
Fortunately, I was initially assigned to the rear, where I was responsible for documenting and collecting information and compiling lists of the front’s logistical needs. I was perfectly happy in this observer and documentation role. After five months, however, I was informed that an officer was needed and was offered a position in an anti-tank unit. I knew nothing about anti-tank warfare and suddenly found myself commanding a platoon of twelve men who, fortunately, were experienced soldiers. Everything went well simply because they knew what they were doing.
I was captured in May 2025 while overseeing the construction of the second line of defence near the front. Officers are usually positioned further back, but my soldiers were exhausted and needed support. Eventually, I found myself in a trench with three grenadiers who had been ordered to defend the position. We were receiving orders from headquarters telling us to fire a little to the left or a little to the right.
Then we came under heavy grenade bombardment for several hours. Everything around us was destroyed. The trees had been shredded and the terrain in front of us was completely exposed. Headquarters congratulated us for having defended our position but ordered us to recover all the unused grenades before withdrawing to the third line of defence. We replied that it was impossible because Russian soldiers were covering our position. The command wanted those grenades recovered because they were high-tech American munitions that they did not want falling into Russian hands.
We were told to wait until nightfall, but even then we could not move because of Russian night-vision equipment. We spent the night in our trench realising that our command valued those shells—those pieces of metal—more than our lives. We understood that a Russian offensive was under way and that we had simply been left behind to defend the rear positions and protect the equipment.
We finally decided to move towards our own lines but encountered a Russian unit and chose to surrender. It was an extremely difficult decision. We had been told that we would be tortured, abused, and treated in inhuman conditions, because Russians were supposedly barbarians.
Choosing between staying alive and dying was one of the hardest decisions we have ever made. Three of us were dead and three remained alive. I told my men to stay calm, and we agreed to surrender. The Russian soldiers were only three or four men themselves. We then marched for two days before reaching a Russian position.
I have now been a prisoner for one year and one month. We discovered an entirely different reality. Not only were we treated well, but Russian soldiers shared their water with us. My two comrades were exchanged during the latest prisoner swap. I chose to remain because I fear I would not be welcomed back in Ukraine. I have decided instead to produce videos and commentary on military operations alongside Russian bloggers to denounce propaganda and the absurdity of this war. In Ukraine, I am officially listed as “missing in action.” Nevertheless, I remain in contact with my family via satellite phone.
I try to look only at the facts and reality. I try to remain fair and objective. The situation has become more difficult and far more deadly on both sides. Drone attacks are now considerably worse than they were a year ago, and the chances of survival on the battlefield have fallen dramatically, despite what Ukrainian propaganda claims.
I hope Europeans will eventually become aware of the realities on the ground and understand that war is not a game. Two years ago, I realised that they had absolutely no idea of what was happening here. I also hope they will put pressure on the Ukrainian government to put an end to this inhuman treatment.
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‘Zharkov,’ the Azov soldier.
Daniel “Zharkov,” a soldier in the notoriously neo–Nazi Azov Regiment, had another surprise in store for us. In his thirties, he is a lanky, soft-spoken giant standing nearly two metres, 6’ 6”. Calm and showing little outward emotion, he recounted how his journey—from the Maidan demonstrations of 2014 to his military service within the controversial far-right Azov movement—ultimately led him to kill a wounded Russian soldier with a knife during the battle of Myrnohrad, in Donetsk, earlier this year.
Zharkov told his story this way.
I was born in the Kyiv region. My father was Sudanese and my mother Ukrainian. As a teenager in the early 2010s, I occasionally used drugs. Someone I knew offered me an easy way to make some money by shouting anti–Yanukovych slogans during the Maidan demonstrations in 2014. I did this once or twice a week. The pay was good, and I was also offered drugs. [Viktor Yanukovych was deposed as president in the U.S.–managed coup of February 2014.]
After Maidan, I was given the opportunity to enlist in the artillery through a military training school, but it wasn’t for me. For several years, I drifted from one odd job to another.
In 2022, I volunteered to join Azov because I believed that Russia had attacked Ukraine and that my country had to be defended. There were many volunteers, and I was assigned to a technical repair brigade responsible for military equipment. After two months, I was sent to the front because I had been caught smoking drugs. There, I received basic defensive training and was transferred to an anti-tank unit in the Donetsk region. My job was to monitor and secure a road. I was not directly on the front line, but I was terrified of shelling, explosions, and artillery fire.
In 2023, I was sent to the Sloviansk region and assigned to an assault company. I was not ready for combat and underwent further training. There was very little to do, and I eventually deserted. I fled to my mother’s home. She advised me to seek treatment at a clinic. Afterwards, I spent several months in the Bila Tserkva region [in central Ukraine].
In May 2025, during a party with friends, the police arrived and I was forcibly enlisted into Azov’s “President” battalion. I was kept under close supervision. I received firearms training and, after some time, was assigned to the Kalina Krasnaya company, where I underwent a further twenty-one days of training near the Moldovan border.
I was then sent to the Myrnohrad front. We were replacing snipers who had been stationed there for an entire month and remained there much longer than expected because the soldiers assigned to relieve us never arrived. Food, water, and ammunition were in short supply. The situation was extremely dangerous because of the large number of drones overhead, and we could leave our cellar for only about fifteen minutes a day. We heard movement outside but never actually saw any Russian soldiers.
I was burned one day and went untreated for an entire week. I requested permission to withdraw but was refused. Several weeks later we were attacked again by Russian forces. I was wounded by a grenade and once again my request to be evacuated was denied.
By November, the weather had become bitterly cold and we were still lacking basic necessities. We were finally authorised to withdraw towards Nova Ekonomichka [in Donetsk]. We had taken refuge in the cellar of a destroyed house. A new coordinator then ordered us to relocate to another house occupied by an elderly woman. We received instructions to “eliminate” [literally, to “clean up” or “make disappear”] everyone we encountered, including the old woman. We remained there for several days, three of us—two in the cellar and one keeping watch in the rubble upstairs. One day, a Russian soldier approached our position. We shot him in the hip and brought him down to our cellar. Our command had instructed us not to take prisoners.
We hesitated for a long time. In the end, I stabbed him with my knife. He collapsed to the floor and we left him there. One of my comrades told me not to worry—that he had simply got what he deserved.
Later, we moved to another house together with other retreating soldiers. There were many F.P.V. [first-person-view] drones in the area, but we were lucky. For several days, we were able to rest, eat, smoke, and move around freely. Supply drones brought us food and water. Eventually, the Russians detected this activity and bombarded our position.
We were forced to withdraw once again. There were many frozen Ukrainian corpses lying along the way. They had died from hunger and thirst several days earlier. We requested artillery support from our command, but none came.
Eventually, the Russians located us and began throwing grenades into our trench. After some time, they called upon us to surrender, promising that our lives would be spared. We were terrified of being executed or tortured but finally decided to raise our hands and give ourselves up.
The Russian soldiers pointed us in the direction we were to walk. At that very moment, our own artillery opened fire on us. Our command did not want us to surrender. I am convinced it was deliberate.
There were six of us still alive at that point. We were all astonished by the reception we received. We were given hot drinks, cigarettes, and food—the complete opposite of what Ukrainian media had led us to expect.
This happened on 8 January of this year.
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Among the occupiers: Natalia and Alexander.
Natalia, 52, and Alexander, 49, were small farmers living in the tiny agricultural village of Cherkasskoye Porechnoye, twelve kilometres northeast of Sudzha, which lies a hundred kilometres southwest of Kursk. They lived through the Ukrainian invasion from the first day, in August 2024, until almost the very last, surviving for seven months amid the ruins of their home.
Here is Natalia’s account of those months.
We had a small farm with a vegetable garden, a barn, cows, and chickens. Our house stood at a crossroads on the road from Sudzha to Kursk. Our village had 176 inhabitants, twenty-six of whom lived on our street. On the morning of 7 August, the day after the invasion, while we still did not know what was happening, we went to Kursk to buy an electric generator. On our way back in the evening, the road was blocked by concrete barriers. The next day we tried to contact our daughter in Kursk, but there was no longer any mobile network.
That was when it began. The Ukrainians arrived from two directions at once. Many cars were trying to flee towards Kursk. Ukrainian armoured vehicles fired on them, injuring and killing many of the occupants. We stayed in our house.
A month later, while retrieving our livestock one evening, we saw tanks and mines on the road. We came across a company of Russian soldiers who had taken refuge in the woods. There were twenty-two of them. They gave us a grenade for our protection. We showed them the route they should take to escape, but it was already too late.
A battle began, and they were all killed by incendiary shells while trying to escape. The next day, we counted twenty charred bodies. We managed to recover their survival kits, which proved extremely useful afterwards. And because they had had time to cut the rope of our cow’s halter, we were able to recover her. Thanks to her and her milk, we were able to survive throughout the winter months. We stayed inside for almost a month, too afraid to go outside.
At the end of September a young Ukrainian soldier came knocking at our door with his rifle to tell us that we had nothing to fear, that he and his comrades were setting up in our street and that they would not fire on civilians. He belonged to a drone unit. They moved into abandoned houses further up our street. They were young men aged twenty to twenty-five.
We sometimes spoke with them. They told us not to go outside at night because of thermal cameras. They were kind, and one day one of them even lent his mobile phone to one of our neighbours, who was celebrating his birthday, so that he could call his family in Russia. He told us that we could flee if we wanted to, but only by going into Ukraine. He would have faced serious consequences if his commander had found out what he had done.
In October we saw an aircraft very high above us releases a large bomb with fins. It fell on a depot containing inflammable fertiliser a kilometre from our house. The explosion was so powerful it blew off the roofs of surrounding houses. We often saw drones, and we quickly learned to distinguish Russian drones from Ukrainian drones.
For six months, we ate potatoes and vegetables from our garden and drank the milk from our cow. In November, the fighting moved northwards, and we were able to recover food abandoned in the shops and neighbouring houses, cooking it on our wood-burning stove while trying not to be detected. An uncle who lived on the same street managed to bake some bread by cooking it on the sheet-metal roof of his house. There was no electricity, and we had to save the generator’s fuel.
Several houses were occupied for a long time by Ukrainian drone operators. These Ukrainians were very decent towards us, while the others—mercenaries, judging by their voices—fired at us. We survived because our house was relatively isolated and had no antenna on the roof.
On 22 February, a Russian drone flew over us and we managed to wave to it. We wrote “khleb” [bread] on a piece of cardboard. For one week, every morning and evening, Russian drones from the Akhmat regiment brought us bread, drinking water, matches, chocolate bars, canned food, and messages of encouragement, also urging us, “Share this food with all those who were suffering with us.” We thanked them by writing “Spassiba” [Thank you] on a board. Then the aid suddenly stopped.
On 3 March, both of us were wounded by fire from a Ukrainian Mavic quadcopter drone. We had gone out to the well to try to find water by breaking the ice. We were bleeding heavily and could no longer continue living in those conditions, but, once again, luck was on our side. Thanks to the survival kits, we were able to make bandages, and we decided to escape the following morning. At dawn, we wrapped ourselves in white sheets so that we would not be spotted in the snow, and we set off along the road with our dog. By an extraordinary stroke of luck, for quite some time we were able to follow the tracks of a Ukrainian armoured vehicle in the snow and thus avoid mines. Then, thanks to our dog sniffing the ground, we were able to avoid anti-personnel mines hidden beneath the snow.
After six hours and twety-six kilometres, around noon we finally came across Russian soldiers, who could not believe that we had managed to travel all that way without being blown up by a mine. We are very religious, and I prayed throughout the entire journey. I believe that the icon we had taken with us saved us.
We were then transferred to the Kursk hospital to treat our wounds and see our children again. The commander of the Akhmat battalion came to see us and told us that they had been forced to stop their deliveries because they had been requisitioned for the counterattack on Sudzha, which took place a few days later. [Russian forces retook Sudzha on 10 March by infiltrating through a pipeline.]
Even the F.S.B. [Russia’s domestic intelligence agency] came from Moscow to question us and ask us how we had survived. The media were also interested in our story. Our cow, calf, and bull are doing well, and the neighbours looking after them send us photographs. Of the people living on our street, twenty were killed or died of hunger or illness; only six survived.
Alexander and Natalia now live in a Kursk apartment building recently constructed to house refugees who lost their homes during the Ukrainian invasion.
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Salli R. served as interpreter for these interviews. Born in Finland of a Russian father and a Finnish mother, she moved to Switzerland as a child and is fluent in Swiss–German as well as Russian. Shocked by the hatred and ostracism she encountered whenever she revealed her Russian origins or attempted to explain the causes and dynamics of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, she relocated to Russia, where she is a blogger and podcaster, a year ago this month.
—G. M.
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This piece previously appeared in the 16 August edition of Arrêt sur Info and in the 21 August edition of Antithèse.
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Guy Mettan is an independent journalist in Geneva and a member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Geneva. He has previously worked at the Journal de Genève, Le Temps stratégique, Bilan, and Le Nouveau Quotidien. He subsequently served as director and editor-in-chief of Tribune de Genève. In 1996, Mettan founded Le Club suisse de la presse, of which he was president and later director from 1998 to 2019.
Two of Mettan’s books, Europe’s Existential Dilemma: To be or not to be an American vassal, and Creating Russophobia: From the Great Schism to anti–Putin hysteria, are available in English from Clarity Press.
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