Two Russian Soldiers Taken Prisoner, Exchanged and Captured Again – on the Same Battlefield

Two Russian soldiers volunteering to fight in Ukraine were taken prisoner for a second time, on the battlefield they had given themselves up to Ukrainian troops once before, a Ukrainian NGO reported on Aug. 4.

Private Shagaa Mikhailovich Saktaagai, a resident of the remote central Siberian region of Tuva, had returned to Russia in a June prisoner exchange, and was sent back to combat and taken prisoner again by Ukrainian troops in July, a report by the Russian soldier advocacy group Khochu Zhit (I want to live) said.

According to his video account, Shagaa signed a contract with Russia’s Ministry of Defense on Dec. 10 and was sent with minimal training to serve with Russia’s 83rd Motorized Rifle Regiment, a unit currently invading Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region. In January he was wounded in an assault in the city of Volchansk and taken prisoner following a Ukrainian counterattack.

Returning to Russia on June 20 as part of a major prisoner exchange agreed by Russia and Ukraine after talks in Istanbul,  Shagaa, per his account, was not allowed to go home to Tuva, nor receive proper medical treatment for his injuries. Instead, officers from Russia’s national secret police agency, the FSB, detained him, interrogated him, and after 14 days of detention, he was sent right back to his old unit, he said. On July 19, he was again taken prisoner by Ukrainian forces, again during a failed attack in the town of Vovchansk, 28 days after he had been exchanged.

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The Khochu Zhit report also profiled Private Dmitriy Ivanov, 21, a resident of the remote Arctic Circle region Komi, as having volunteered for Russian army service and subsequently having been captured in combat by Ukrainian troops twice on the same battlefield.

According to the report and Ivanov’s statements, local authorities pressured him into signing a volunteer contract with the Russian army in September 2024, after which he was sent to Ukraine’s Kharkiv sector to serve with the 82nd Motor Rifle Regiment. Per those accounts, he was wounded in the leg and arm and captured in combat on Oct. 7 in the town of Vovchansk.

This year, Ivanov returned to Russia in a June 9 prisoner exchange and, on Jul. 19, was again captured in combat in Vovchansk, 39 days after he had been exchanged.

Ivanov’s and Shagaa’s regiments are, per open sources, both sub-units of Russia’s 69th Guards Motor Rifle Division, a formation geo-located to the Vovchansk-Kharkiv sector. Russian forces overran Vovchansk at the start of the war but a Ukrainian counter-offensive liberated part of the town in October 2022. Since then Vovchansk has been an active battleground.

The Khochu Zhit report said: “Ivanov and Shagaa were unspeakably lucky to survive. Last month, we published a list (https://t.me/hochu_zhyt/365) of Russians who, after being exchanged, were also sent to the front, where they died. This is an extremely common practice in the Russian army.”

“If in the past relatives of Russian prisoners of war wrote to us with questions about the delivery of parcels to the camp, now their mothers are asking them not to exchange their children until the end of hostilities – because only death awaits them at home,” the Khochu Zhit report says.   

Major Ukrainian media reported that the Ivanov/Shagaa story is authentic. Kyiv Post could not confirm all the details, however, the longstanding Russian army policy of pushing former prisoners of war back into combat without leave is well-documented, as are crushing casualty rates for units ordered to conduct assaults.

In July, Khochu Zhit, in one of the best-documented reports on a Russian combat unit’s casualties, published internal personnel tracking documents, most of it in spreadsheet form, obtained from Russia’s 74th Motor Rifle Brigade. Open sources place that unit in the eastern Pokrovsk sector – the most dangerous and violent battlefield on the 1,000+ kilometer (621+ mile) fighting front.

Per data published in the report, as of June 1, the 74th Brigade, over the course of the war, has suffered losses of 2,479 killed and 2,732 missing. Another 2,789 people are listed as absent from their unit and possibly deserters.

With an on-paper full-strength 3,500 men, the numbers made public by Khochu  Zhit imply that the 74th Brigade had, in three years of fighting, lost its entire frontline strength in combat, and then lost just as many men again, who arrived at the unit as replacements.

The loss rate in frontline fighting units is almost certainly higher, because most casualties are suffered by soldiers assigned to the infantry, scouts, and combat engineers, the report said.