Those who remained under occupation taken into army: How former ATO soldier captured by "Svoboda" battalion
Why Pavlo was unable to leave the occupation, how he ended up in Putin’s army, and later returned to Ukraine, but in captivity to the soldiers of the "Svoboda" battalion.
- Pshenychnyi Pavlo Oleksandrovych, born on 07.05.1993, Kherson region, Kalanchak village. He was enlisted in the military unit 41680.
- Please tell us, in what year did you end up in the anti-terrorist operation zone? In the ATO zone for Ukraine.
- In October, 21 or 23, I don't remember, I signed a contract on 23rd. And a month later, on 21 November, we entered the ATO area.
- Was it the 42nd motorised infantry battalion?
- Yes, the 42nd motorised infantry battalion.
- The 57th separate mechanised brigade?
- Yes, it was subordinated to the 57th Brigade.
- How long did you stay in the ATO zone?
- I stayed in the ATO zone for about 4 months. And on 4 February, it was a very nice day, I called my family at home, decided to do some laundry - I hung them on the clothesline. I was coming out of the trench, hanging the last thing - one leg was already behind the trench - and a sniper shot me. It was good that I was not wearing body armour, it really saved me, and even the doctors said so. I was even on YouTube, I was shown on TSN, TSN came to visit.
Ward two, intensive care unit, military hospital. Private Pasha is lying here, he was mortally wounded. His war lasted a little over a month.
- They barely got me there,, as it turns out, I had two ribs shattered, a kidney torn and half of my liver destroyed.
- What year was it?
- 2019, 4 February. In general, my entire service took 9 months, and the hospital took 9 months.
- How did the events of 24 February 2022 unfold for you?
- To be honest, I didn't even understand how they unfolded. All I saw was that we went outside: shots, big explosions. We had a border guard unit on the edge of Kalanchak, and two helicopters were just shooting at it with rockets. That's it, all the shots I heard for three years.
- What was the attitude of the Russian soldiers towards you when the Russian occupation forces began to create their administration? How did it all go?
- For about a year, there were only military men, Dagestanis, there were no Russians, no pure Russian military men. There were Dagestanis, a lot of these nationalities. Well, mostly not ours, they can't even speak Russian properly. They started to search everyone at once, checking their documents. From the first days, from the first month, I was already under the hood, because my good neighbours told that I was an ATO soldier, so they wouldn't touch them. Before me, they had a rotation for a month or two, they changed, some to Crimea, some back, some to Crimea, some back. And every time after this rotation, new ones came again and beat me again. Well, it wasn't that they beat me to death, but it wasn't very good to be under the hood all the time. Then, about a year and a half later, they arrived, and it was calmer, and the police started to appear. Well, they weren't working yet, but people started to appear.
They came to me from the DPR. They had DPR, Russians on their chevron. They came and started asking me questions, but I didn't tell them anything about serving in the ATO. And they listened to me carefully, they were so calm, they didn't beat me.
One of them sat down in front of me and said: "Let's start from the beginning". He was smiling and said, "Let's watch the video of how we rescued Private Pavlo on YouTube, and then we'll talk again. Or will we talk right away?
My last injury, in the back, was in 2024: the military came, drunk, and stabbed me in the back. They just wanted to stab me in the kidney, in the liver, but since I don't have a kidney, the right one, I was very lucky.
- Why didn't you decide to leave the occupied territory?
- Look, it turns out that when the SMO began, I had a civilian wife, we were starting life, we were supposed to have a child somewhere in the beginning of summer, on 24 February the SMO began, and my child was born on 20 June. The child was born, about a year passed, and we tried to leave. Neither I nor my wife had made Russian passports. We only had medical documents from the maternity hospital. We tried to leave. We got to the Lithuanian border, Russia-Lithuania, and we were turned back on the Russian side because the child's documents from the maternity hospital were not valid, and a child's certificate was required. So we went back. And my wife made a certificate, made a passport for herself, I did not make a passport. I did it a little later. And we left. We tried to leave again. They let us through on the Russian border, but they did not let us through with Russian documents for the child on the Lithuanian border. So we went back again.
Even though we had Ukrainian passports, we showed them at the Lithuanian border, not foreign passports, just ordinary Ukrainian passports, and the Russian child's certificate, we had nothing else. And they did not let us through, they turned us back the same way.
And even though I had been harassed before, they came when neither I nor my wife had made a Russian passport, Juvenile Service came to take the child away, almost put the child into the car, saying that the child was nobody, and did not have a Russian certificate, and the documents from the maternity hospital were not valid. What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for Ukraine? You're doing nothing... They wanted to take the child away from us altogether. But my wife cried, promised to do it, and went to do it first.
- When did you get your Russian passports made?
- I did it in early 2024. And on 15 September 2024, we received furniture - we bought furniture for the kitchen. The next day, the police came and said that there had been a theft in the neighbouring village. They brought something to you and unloaded it, and we need to see if it's not stolen stuff. And then the second group shouts: "We found it!" - they showed a full bag of cannabis... That's it... They searched the house, and told me - for your own good, write that it is yours for personal use... And that's it... On 15 September, the investigation began, for several months, then the trials began. I had my first trial on 5 December 2024, and on 29 May 2025, I was sentenced. And before that, 3 weeks before, I was told that the next court was already a verdict, so pack your things, you will be in prison for 10 years.
- At what point did you sign the contract?
- I didn't know, I signed the verdict, and that was the contract. I signed the verdict and the military commissariat came in. They said - "You will not serve time, you are ours."
- Did you receive any money for signing the contract?
- Yes.
- How much did you receive?
- 800 thousand. Well, I bought ammunition for 400 thousand of them. It was 400 for each person, and then later another 400. 400 thousand. The full amount ammunition I had to buy according to their list cost 290 thousand hryvnias.
- How much training did you have before you went on a combat mission?
- A month and 13 days. Well, in general, the training was supposed to last from 2 to 3 weeks. But for some reason, the two of us were kept there for a month and 13 days.
- What did the training consist of?
- Training... to hold a stand with a machine gun, mostly a lot of walking, marching, not drinking water. Convicts train there.
- Are the instructors prisoners?
- Yes, the instructors are convicts who were on combat missions, stormed the area, survived. They were pardoned and now they are instructors.
- In general, how did you get along at the training ground? What did they tell you? The people who were with you, where were they from?
- There were practically no Russians. There were people from Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
- Were there many from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia?
- Yes, very, very many.
- And what kind of people are they?
- Young people, adults, boys.
- People who sign the contract?
- Yes, yes. For example, just to make it clear, one of them signed a contract, he is 48 years old, he is a driver, he signed a contract because he has a brother and he needs an expensive operation, because he will not earn such money, the operation is somewhere in Crimea, in Sevastopol or Simferopol, there are some serious hernias.
The second one, from my Kalanchak, is a Belarusian, he has neither Belarusian nor Ukrainian documents, in fact, he practically lives like nobody. And he was promised Russian citizenship. And there are many people who are fighting for citizenship who have no documents at all. They just have a green card. They give you a green card that tells you who you are, and that's it.
- If you count it this way, how many people were there from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions at the training ground?
- While I was there, there were 20 of us, 8 of them were definitely from Zaporizhzhia, Kherson region. And the rest were mostly from Donetsk and Luhansk.
- And how did you communicate with people from Donetsk and Luhansk region?
- Basically, there were no conflicts, so to speak, I've never seen anything like that.
- How did you go on your combat mission?
- I was at the training ground. At 12 o'clock, not even at 12, at 11, they told three men that we were leaving today. A car came to feed everyone. We had lunch, the three of us were loaded into the car, brought in, and given 15 minutes to take our belongings from the training ground. We took them and were taken to Makiivka. We spent two more hours in Makiivka, where they took everything, including our phones, and searched all our backpacks. After two hours, we were sent to Avdiivka. In Avdiivka, we also showed on a video camera what each of us had in our backpacks.
- On a video camera?
- Yes, right on video. And he says the lists, I pick up the backpack, and it's laid out in length, things. This, that, and the other, everything is there, everything is there, everything. And on the 27th, we went to the farm at 3 am. We stayed there for an hour and a half, and then we walked 8 kilometres to the first TDF position. Well, the legs that carried food and water there. The legs brought us there, and then we started moving, one man stayed behind, two men, we were the first to leave. We were going to I-don't know-where, well, yes, where we were told to return.
- What was your combat mission, what did you have to do?
- Before I got there, my combat task was to take a position and observe.
- How many people have you had with you?
- Two men. Two men on the position.
- How long have you been at this position?
- We spent the night, and guys from the "Svoboda" battalion came and took us prisoner.
- How has it happened? Have you just been at the position?
- We were just lying there, he was lying about three metres away from me, I was lying there, and I heard someone coming from the field, from the corner I was supposed to be watching, and I wasn't even watching at the time, I was just lying there. What was the sense? To look at something around the clock, to sit and not sleep, two corners. How can you do that? You can't do that. Moreover, he was there with me, he was dehydrated, he had been there for a week, he had not eaten, had not drunk, well, he could not walk, he was losing his orientation.
And then some guys from the "Svoboda" battalion came up - who are you? I shouted - First Slavic, I didn't even take the machine gun a metre and a half away from me. And the one who was with me managed to take an assault rifle. I told him to put the gun down, the guys must be ours, they answered something, I raised my hands, they are ours, ours, I said.
The guys came up to me and said, "Are you observing any identification marks there? " I said, "I don't know," I said, "What kind of identification marks can there be," and they said, "like a green stripe," I said, "I don't know who it is. Then I look and see that it's a pixelated uniform: Oh, Ukraine, at last, take me away, I'm out of here! Give me some water to drink.
I told them everything at once: what, where, who was standing. And there were people who were supposed to go with water to a new position nearby, but the "Svoboda" men did not touch them, took us prisoner and retreated with us.
-The man you were with at the position, where was he from?
- From Rivne region, he somehow ended up in Donetsk and went to fight to get a Russian passport.
- Was it possible to refuse to perform a mission in the Russian army?
- No. A bullet in the head. Not like a bullet to the head, but people who refuse, go against the orders, start hiding. They are brought to Makiivka, sit there at the permanent deployment point, and they are told - you will sit there, then go back to your mission. They stay there for about 2 weeks, then they are released to go to the store. They start to think that everything will be fine. And then the assault group goes on a mission - they send him - alone, not two - the group reaches - they know that there is Ukraine, there is Ukraine, but there is a minefield. They take off his armour and assault rifle and say: "Friend, if you get to that point, if you survive, we will return your armour and assault rifle, and you will go to war with us." In other words, he is thrown to identify firing points and mines, to show where to shoot or not to go. This is his fate.
- Are people coming from Russia to live here now?
- There are a lot of empty apartments left, from which people have left. These apartments are mostly given to teachers, medical workers, state employees - they open them up and you can live there.
It is from the regions of Russia, those police officers and medical workers who stay here on a permanent basis, because at first they changed once a month, twice a month, they changed them, and others came. Now they bring their families here. And they live here in the same way.
- What were some funny incidents that you can remember?
- Curious incidents? During the first six months, many young girls were found in trash bins, naked, dead, with their heads shot through, right in the bin. These ch#chmeky raped them, they didn't care. There was no law, they could kill anyone and get away with it. They took them away and shot them. Many people disappeared because they just showed their teeth, I'm right there, I'm wrong there, that's it - in the car and no one sees you anymore.
