Captured Russian soldiers beg to return home and claim Vladimir Putin LIED to them
CAPTURED Russian troops yesterday claimed they were thrown into war as cannon fodder and lied to by Vladimir Putin.
They pleaded to be returned home — after Ukrainians celebrated using British weapons to obliterate tanks and armoured personnel carriers.
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The prisoners urged relatives in Russia to call for the conflict to end and wept: “No one wants war.”
Ukraine said they would be freed — so long as their mums come to collect them.
A video released by security forces showed five Russians, barely in their 20s, from the 25th Crew, Unit 75242. They were interrogated as they kneeled with hands cuffed.
One told the camera: “We were told we were going for training. Eventually, after we were sent to the front line, everyone was demoralised and nobody wanted to fight.
“But we got told that we would be enemies of state and because it’s wartime we might get shot.
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“We were thrown in as cannon fodder. People in our unit at least don’t want this war. They want to go home and want peace.”
Another, Strumov Alexander Anatolievich, said he was a military driver and added: “They told us it was training. Everything was going to be fine but we didn’t know what it actually was. We were lied to.”
Voron Alexei Nickolayevich and Nishkov Rinat Maskudovich gave their names and insisted they believed it was a military exercise.
Voron says: “We were lied to and that’s why I am here.”
One prisoner sobbed: “They don’t even pick up the corpses, there are no funerals.”
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But another video showed kind Ukrainian women looking after a young and starving POW.
He wolfed down their food and a cup of tea before they let him use a phone to videocall his mum in Russia. The soldier wept when she answered.
It came after British weapons were used as Ukrainians ambushed the Russian column with Belfast-built, shoulder-fired missiles called the NLAW — Next-generation Light Anti-tank Weapons.
They left a tangled mass of metal along a tree-lined road in Bucha, 20 miles from Kyiv.
The street was blocked by remains of the convoy which had also been met by locals armed with petrol bombs.
The ambush happened earlier this week but locals celebrated the victory yesterday.
Bucha’s Mayor Anatoli Fedoruk posted footage and said: “These are the results of their invasion and the work of our armed forces.”
Another captured Russian said his column was wiped out after rolling through Chernobyl. He told the camera: “We did not even get to Kyiv.
"When I woke I was captured. I call on the armed forces of Russia to stop bombing Kyiv. Enough bombs.
“We are killing peaceful people. This is not our war. Mothers and wives, collect your husbands. There is no need to be here.”
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NLAWs are also hampering the formidable 40-mile Russian convoy heading to Kyiv from the north. The UK supplied 2,000 in January and more since.
Yesterday Ukrainian defence officials said their forces have destroyed nearly 1,500 Russian vehicles, including 211 tanks, and killed 5,840 troops.
Russia admitted 498 dead and 1,597 wounded — a huge underestimate, according to experts.
And defence specialist Charles Lister said: “According to US officials 100,000 Russia troops in Ukraine (70 per cent of its deployed force) are running out, or has run out, of fuel and food.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to “erase” Ukraine and its people.
He said Kyiv remained Russia’s key target. Five people were killed in an attack on a TV tower near the city centre yesterday.
Mayor and former boxing champ Vitali Klitschko said: “The enemy wants to take the heart of our country. But we will fight and not give up Kyiv.”
Western-supplied missiles have also been used to destroy another convoy crossing a bridge on a main route into Kyiv.
And in Trostyanets, in the northeast Sumy region, images showed abandoned Russian vehicles including four tanks, two armoured personnel carriers and two trucks.
With their country’s internet still working, citizens shared many clips of destroyed military hardware and praised western powers for sending supplies.
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One said of the Bucha success: “The Ukrainian Army launched an ambush attack with the NLAW anti-tank missiles donated in large numbers by Great Britain. More NLAWs need to be sent to Kyiv.”
Armed Forces minister James Heappey last week said the anti-tank missiles had “already proven invaluable” and the Government was aware of “a number of circumstances” in which they had been used to defeat Russian armour.
But analysts fear Putin is shifting tactics to artillery and air bombardments, which he previously used to crush fighters’ resolve in Chechnya and Syria.
Ukrainian officials said there had been an increase in strikes on schools, apartment blocks and hospitals in the last 48 hours.
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Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said: “This is coward behaviour. They are not military, they are terrorists.
“In Russia, relatives of prisoners and victims are beginning to protest. The great lie of Russian propaganda is breaking. We are staying united for victory. Glory to the heroes of Ukraine.”
Aim to destroy
WITH less than an hour’s training, a soldier can learn to fire an NLAW and take out a battle tank from up to 800 yards away.
The Next-generation Light Anti-tank Weapon — being celebrated by Ukrainians in memes online — is ready to fire in five seconds and can predict where a moving target is heading.
Its armour-piercing warhead races towards the target at 440mph — or 200 yards a second.
A top-attack mode allows it to fly a yard or so above a target before releasing a downward-facing blast, hitting a tank’s vulnerable roof.
Each of the British-Swedish NLAWs costs £20,000 but can only be fired once.
