You're reading: War Crimes: Despite Minsk peace deal, hundreds remain prisoners of war in Ukraine’s Donbas

Nikolai Surmenko was lucky: He wasn't beaten or tortured during his seven long months as a prisoner of Russian-backed separatists.

“They treated me more or less OK,” Surmenko, a 24-year-old soldier of the Ukrainian army, said of his captors. “They did make me work, clean up the roads, move obstructions and cut metal and stuff. But that was it. It could have been worse.”

Much worse. Evidence has emerged that numerous Ukrainian prisoners of war have been summarily executed by their captors while Russian citizen Arseniy Pavlov – better known as warlord Motorola – bragged to the Kyiv Post on April 3 that he has personally executed 15 captured Ukrainian soldiers.

Evidence of the alleged murders of Ukrainian prisoners is emerging nearly two months after the Minsk II peace agreement mandated the release of all prisoners from both sides of the war.

Instead, by the latest official estimate, at least 400 Ukrainians are still held by Kremlin-backed separatists. Activists say the number is much higher.

Meanwhile, separatists in Donetsk say the Ukrainian side still is imprisoning more than 1,300 of their fighters, although Markiyan Lubkivskyi, an aide to the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, has disputed that number, telling Interfax-Ukraine that the estimate “did not correspond to reality.”

Lubkivskyi, however, did not specify how many separatists were still in Ukrainian custody and he could not be reached for clarification on April 9.

Surmenko wound up in the hands of Russian-backed fighters in August, following some of the fiercest fighting in the war, when Ukrainian troops suffered heavy losses during what’s become known as the massacre of Ilovaisk.

After more than six months in the former Security Service of Ukraine building in Donetsk, Surmenko was one of 18 people freed over the weekend.

Kyiv Post+

Soon after Surmenko’s release, however, Russian-backed separatists announced that they would halt the prisoner exchange.

Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, have vowed to bring the remaining 400 captives home alive.

Volunteers involved in the prisoner swaps warn that all is not what it seems. They say that a corrupt political farce is playing out and that the actual number of Ukrainian prisoners, civilians and soldiers, is much higher than officials acknowledge.

“There are actually more than 1,000 people who we should be looking for,” said Oleg Kotenko, head of the Patriot volunteer organization, which has worked closely with government officials in freeing Ukrainian prisoners. “That includes not only soldiers – about 200 of whom are in captivity – but also civilians, ordinary people and volunteers. There are ordinary civilians who just wanted to pick up their car somewhere, wound up in captivity and are now slaves.”

Kotenko said that his group knows the exact location of 200 captives.

Kotenko said politicians who are supposed to be acting on Ukraine’s behalf are part of the problem in winning the release of those in custody.

He said that a separatist field commander “was ready to hand over prisoners to us, but he was stopped” by separatists working in cahoots with Viktor Medvedchuk, the tycoon representing the Ukrainian government’s interests on this issue.

“The separatists themselves are concocting all these problems together with Medvedchuk. They invent these problems in order to resolve the problems themselves and then look like heroes,” Kotenko charged. “The real problem is with Medvedchuk and his people. He does not represent the interests of Ukraine, he represents the interests of Russia. And he does whatever Russia needs.”

Oleg Bobavin, a spokesman for Medvedchuk, denied allegations that Medvedchuk’s loyalties weren’t in the right place. “He just knows how to free the prisoners. He has already said on more than one occasion that if there is someone else who can do it, let them do it. He won’t stand in their way,” Bobavin said.

Vasyl Budik, an aide to the deputy defense minister and a driving force behind the prisoner exchanges, said that the process has been hijacked. Just the other day, Budik said, “three people who were already dressed and ready to go home were taken back after the rebels got a phone call from someone.”

Medvedchuk’s role

Many questions about the prisoner exchanges remain unanswered. One of them concerns Medvedchuk’s role as chief negotiator.

Medvedchuk, the chief of staff to former President Leonid Kuchma, has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with numerous official Kremlin photographs showing the pair rubbing elbows at various events. Muddying the waters further is the fact that prior to the EuroMaidan Revolution, Medvedchuk founded Ukrainian Choice, a group aimed at preventing then-President Viktor Yanukovych from getting too close to the European Union.

Less is known about Volodymyr Ruban, another negotiator, a mysterious former lieutenant general who has secured the release of hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners in separatist-controlled territories.

Ruban’s group, Officer Corps, is not officially connected to the government, but he works closely with Defense Ministry officials.

Some say he is not quite what he seems, however.

Viktor Medvedchuk

“I’m no investigator, but I have talked to relatives of prisoners who say Ruban blatantly made (financial) demands of them to begin the process of freeing their loved ones,” Kotenko, head of the Patriot group, said.

Ruban could not be reached for comment.

Viktor Maistrenko, another volunteer involved in prisoner swaps, painted a similar picture. He also estimated that more than 1,000 people are still being held in captivity.

Surmenko, the Ukrainian soldier who was released recently, said he had heard of cases in which bribes were demanded from the families of friends of Ukrainian prisioners. But he said that he saw no money exchange hands in his own release.

Prisoner exchange

Budik, who spent nearly three months in captivity and was freed last July, noted that there had been several cases of prisoners’ relatives being scammed, with some volunteers believed to be extorting money to arrange prisoner swaps and at least one government official arrested for doing the same thing.

Some believe the lack of governmental coordination in freeing the remaining captives has provided fertile ground for such schemes.

Kuchma, a member of the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine that talks with separatists, on April 6 called for a government agency to be set up to free the remaining prisoners. Kuchma, president from 1994-2004, lamented the fact that so much of the work depends on volunteers.

Maistrenko, the volunteer involved in efforts to free prisoners, said separatists are using the captives as pawns in the information war. “They draw out the process by telling the relatives of prisoners, ‘Go to the Maidan or the Rada, because it’s Ukraine that isn’t cooperating.’ In reality, that isn’t the case. The Ukrainian side is ready,” he said.

Kotenko of Patriot was less forgiving of authorities: “‘Patriot is responsible for finding about 90 percent of the prisoners who end up getting freed. If we didn’t search for these people and find out their whereabouts, no one would – not Medvedchuk, not anyone on any governmental level. No one would do it.”

In order to ensure that the remaining prisoners are freed, he said, “someone in the Presidential Administration needs to answer for it.”

Said Maistrenko: “No one can say at this point exactly how many people remain in captivity, but I’d guess there are no fewer than 1,500 people. Who knows how many of them are in Russia, or in black sites somewhere, outside of the realm that the rebels want to show the world.”