Ukrainian POWs held in Chechnya are reportedly being used as unpaid labour to build homes for senior figures in the entourage of Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov, according to Ukrainian soldier Serhii Skotarenko, who spent more than three years in captivity, partially in Grozny.

Speaking with the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN on Thursday, 52-year-old Skotarenko said he volunteered to join the Ukrainian military in early 2023 and was captured several months later while carrying out a combat mission in Ukraine’s Donetsk region by soldiers from the self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’.

‘I thought they would bury us somewhere in the mines where nobody would ever find us. The only thing that saved me was that, in less than a day, I was “sold” to the Chechens. They don’t hide it. They care about the fate of their own fighters and want to exchange them for our soldiers’, Skotarenko said.

According to him, Chechen soldiers mainly man checkpoints and perform policing duties.

‘They try not to get involved in anything and stay in the rear. If they’re sent to the front, it means some general couldn’t get them out of it’, Skotarenko said, adding that ‘they don’t have the ability to capture prisoners themselves, so they buy them for money or exchange them for something else’.

He noted that both the prisoners themselves and the Chechen personnel responsible for guarding them expected they would be exchanged quickly, but that did not happen. He claimed the Chechen authorities wanted to exchange them exclusively for Chechen POWs, without explaining how Ukraine could be holding Chechen POWs if, as he also argued, Chechen units were not directly engaged in frontline combat.

Skotarenko said he was not treated particularly badly in Chechnya because the guards understood that ‘the same treatment could be given to Chechen fighters held in Ukrainian captivity’. Prisoners received two 300-gramme bowls of soup and a piece of bread each day, while those who worked were given an extra bread roll. During the three years he spent in Chechnya, Skotarenko said he lost 15 kilogrammes and contracted tuberculosis.

‘Of course, there were incidents, provocations and cases of ill-treatment. But most of the time they were stopped by their own people. We were kept under constant psychological pressure and there were attempts to win us over. Compared with conditions in Russian prisons, we were generally treated normally. The only thing was that we were constantly held in the basements of the traffic police in Grozny’, Skotarenko said.

He was apparently referring to the headquarters of Chechnya’s State Traffic Safety Inspectorate.

Two years later, the building began to be demolished, and Skotarenko and the other prisoners were moved to basements beneath a construction site. He said Kadyrov later visited the site personally and ordered that the prisoners be given a television.

‘They brought us prayer books and various religious texts. At Easter, they even brought us traditional Easter cakes from a church’, Skotarenko said.

After the transfer, the prisoners were forced to work so that they could ‘earn their food’.

‘We were made to work on both apartment blocks and private houses. Representatives of Grozny’s elite “hired” us for the work’, Skotarenko claimed.

He did not specify who owned the properties under construction.

Skotarenko was returned to Ukraine as part of a prisoner exchange on 24 April. A total of 193 Ukrainian soldiers were released in the exchange. According to him, around 35 Ukrainian prisoners remain in what he described as Chechnya’s basements.

The Chechen authorities have not commented on Skotarenko’s allegations.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Chechnya has become one of the regions to which Ukrainian POWs have been transferred. The Russian authorities have not disclosed how many Ukrainian POWs are being held in the republic or in which facilities.

The existence of detention sites for Ukrainian POWs in Chechnya has previously been reported by released soldiers, their relatives, Ukrainian human rights initiatives, and state projects dealing with prisoner exchanges, as well as the Chechen authorities.

As early as 2024, Kadyrov claimed that ‘up to 10 Ukrainian prisoners are being held at every strategic facility’ in Chechnya and described them as ‘human shields’ and hostages. On 29 October that year, after a drone strike caused a fire at the Russian Special Forces University (RUS) in Gudermes, Kadyrov claimed that Ukrainian POWs had been killed there.

Kadyrov suggests using Ukrainian POWs as human shields in Chechnya

Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov has suggested that Ukrainian POWs should be used as human shields at potential military targets. Kadyrov made his suggestion during a meeting with Ukrainian POWs prior to a live broadcast on Chechen television on Wednesday. A fragment of this meeting was later published on his official Telegram channel. ’We need to put them [Ukrainian POWs] on the objects that American satellites have photos of, we need to put them on the roofs of these objects, let them guard

OC MediaElizaveta Chukharova

Prior to that, in January 2024, Kadyrov had proposed releasing 20 Ukrainian soldiers in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed on his relatives, horses, and aircraft. Following criticism from pro-war Russian bloggers, he later described the proposal as ‘heavy trolling’.

A number of former prisoners have told Ukrainian and international media that they were held in closed facilities and pre-trial detention centres and subjected to physical and psychological pressure.

Relatives of prisoners have repeatedly complained about the prolonged lack of information regarding their whereabouts and the difficulties of obtaining answers through the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The 1949 Third Geneva Convention permits POWs to work only under strict conditions, including guarantees of safety, humane treatment while prohibiting forced or degrading labour.

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