Russia is forcing Ukrainian prisoners into its own army and starving others while "fattening" a few for show, Andrii Pasternak of the SBU's Joint Center for coordinating the search and release of prisoners says. Ukrainian intelligence also has information about Moscow creating battalions from Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs), UkrInform reports.

As of May 2026, approximately 7,000 Ukrainian service members were held in Russian captivity, while the number of civilian detainees is estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000, according to Vice Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament Olena Kondratiuk.

Russia is forming units from Ukrainian prisoners

Pasternak described the POW battalions as confirmed and monitored.

"We know about such battalions. Together with our colleagues from foreign intelligence and military intelligence, we track and record this. Such facts exist," he stated.

Forcing prisoners of war to serve in the captor's forces is itself a war crime. The Geneva Conventions prohibit compelling a POW to fight against their own country, and turning captured Ukrainian soldiers into Russian units, if confirmed at scale, would be a grave violation on top of the coercion required to make men fight the country they were defending.

Russia feeds up some prisoners and starves others

The coordinator also pointed to a practice of staging appearances before exchanges. Knowing whom it will hand over, Russia brings those prisoners, including civilians, into "normal form" through a process he called "fattening," drawing on testimony from released Ukrainian defenders and returned civilians.

The starvation behind it is deliberate and selective. Pasternak characterized it as an element of torture: some prisoners are deliberately not fed, while others are fed up so they look more or less normal for the swap. Ukraine's negotiators note at every meeting that the two sides' prisoners differ starkly, he added. The returning Ukrainians are almost all very thin, with only a few in decent condition, while the Russian POWs Ukraine hands back are genuinely well-fed.

Russian forces have executed at least 345 Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered since the start of the full-scale war, Ukrainian Ombudsperson Dmytro Lubinets said at a press conference at Ukrinform.

The figure is the latest point on a documented and rising curve of a systematic war crime. Ukraine's prosecutors and international monitors have tracked these killings from 268 confirmed by July 2025 to over 330 by March 2026. Financial Times investigation found the executions appear to be systematic military policy directed from Russian command, with intercepted orders to "shoot prisoners on the spot."

The victims had surrendered

Lubinets described people killed after they had given up.

"It means that they laid down their weapons, came out with raised hands, lay on the ground, and showed they were no longer fighting," he said, and Russian soldiers examined them and confirmed they were unarmed.

Then the soldiers killed them.

"We have recorded cases where they fully demand that the clothes be removed. And after that, they force them to lie on the ground the same way, and shoot the Ukrainian soldiers at point-blank range," Lubinets added.

Killing a surrendered soldier is a war crime

Lubinets stressed the legal character of the act. The killing of soldiers who have surrendered is a distinct war crime, he said.

The prohibition is absolute. Under the Geneva Conventions, a soldier who lays down arms and surrenders is protected, and killing a prisoner of war is a grave breach of international law. Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention prohibits "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds" against those who have laid down their arms, with no battlefield circumstance that permits it, per the ICRC.

The count keeps rising and accountability lags

Ukraine documents each case for eventual prosecution, but most perpetrators are in Russia, beyond reach, and Russian courts and media have glorified the killings rather than punished them.