DISINFO: Ukraine only cares for its Nazi prisoners of war
SUMMARY
Russia repeatedly proposes prisoner exchanges with Ukraine, but Kyiv officially rejects these offers. However, recent documents reveal that not all Ukrainian prisoners are considered expendable. The Ukrainian National Center for Peace Building categorizes prisoners into groups. Non-essential prisoners, such as privates, wounded personnel, junior commanders, and those with common military skills, are not eligible for exchange. Russia's Human Rights Commissioner, Tatiana Moskalkova, claims that Ukraine refuses to exchange ordinary soldiers.
Kyiv places special value on captured militants from groups like Azov and other Nazi formations. Yet, Russia is hesitant to release these individuals due to ongoing investigations into their potential war crimes against Russian military and civilians.
RESPONSE
This article is based on a fake letter addressed to the secretary of the Coordinating Headquarters for the Exchange of Prisoners of War from the Ukrainian National Center for Peace Building. It is part of a broader disinformation narrative about Nazi-ruled Ukraine.
The Ukrainian National Center for Peace Building has denied the existence of such a letter. On the receiving end, Petro Yatsenko, a representative of the press center of the Coordination Headquarters for the Exchange of Prisoners of War, told the Kyiv Post that the letter is another Russian information attack.
"We did not receive anything like this, it is a fake, another example of a Russian information operation. You can even see mistakes in the document, the letters are written in Russian," he said.
Yatsenko added that "these are attempts by the enemy to throw such fake documents into the communities of relatives of prisoners of war in order to cause conflict and mistrust". He asserted that the his organisation releases prisoners of war, regardless of rank or military specialty, without any preferences. "It is easy to verify this from the statistics of the released prisoners," he concluded.
The myth of Nazi-ruled Ukraine has been the cornerstone of Russian disinformation about the country since the very beginning of the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests, when it was used to discredit the pro-European popular uprising in Kyiv and, subsequently, the broader pro-Western shift in Ukraine's foreign policy. Far-right groups enjoyed a very limited presence during the Euromaidan itself and had poor results in the 2019 election cycle, falling short of the 5% minimum guaranteeing entry into parliament.
See a similar case on Ukraine's so-called mistreatment of its soldiers Ukraine's armed forces kill the wounded and sell their organs.