Russian POW describe capture in Ukraine

 NY Times:

With hands still dirty from the battlefield, a dozen Russian prisoners of war sat, stony-faced, in a conference room of a Ukrainian news agency Saturday and described being captured after their armored columns were ambushed.

Lt. Dmitry Kovalensky, who had fought in a Russian tank unit and spoke at the behest of his Ukrainian captors, said he recently came under fire from an armed drone and shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles on a road near Sumy in northeastern Ukraine. “The whole column burned,” he said.

Around the same time and a few miles away, at a makeshift Ukrainian military base in an abandoned building on the western edge of Kyiv, Ukrainian soldiers prepared for the same sort of ambushes that took out Kovalensky’s unit.

Lt. Yevgeny Yarantsev of Ukraine said his country’s soldiers fight differently than the Russians. The troops under his command organize in small, nimble units that can sneak up on and ambush the lumbering columns of Russian tanks.

“They have a lot of tanks, we have a lot of anti-tank weapons,” said Yarantsev, who previously fought with a volunteer group against Russia in eastern Ukraine. “In the open field, it will be even. It’s easier to fight in the city.”

The two young officers — the same rank, but each representing a different country — gave some of the few firsthand accounts of the fighting that have emerged in the 10-day war. The Russian was a prisoner of war speaking under the watchful eye of heavily armed Ukrainian security officials. The Ukrainian spoke as he displayed newly obtained, sophisticated weapons from the United States.

The accounts of soldiers from both sides give a small glimpse of how the war is being fought around Kyiv in the north. There, relying largely on ambush tactics, Ukrainian forces have slowed the Russian campaign to encircle and capture the capital, even as Russian troops barrel across the south.

Kovalensky and the other Russian prisoners were presented at a news conference intended to support Ukraine’s claim that it had captured a significant number of Russian soldiers. In their statements, the prisoners blended woodenly phrased condemnations of their own country’s leadership with genuine-sounding details of the conflict’s early firefights.

According to the rules governing treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, governments are supposed to protect a prisoner of war from being made into a “public curiosity,” a concept that is sometimes interpreted as not presenting them in any public setting. The Russian soldiers looked exhausted but showed no outward signs of having been mistreated.

The prisoners’ comments and the fact of their capture supported descriptions by Western military analysts and governments of a Russian offensive that has suffered grave setbacks. The Russian army’s superior numbers and equipment, however, could well reverse that trend.

“Near the end of the day’s movement on Feb. 27, our column was attacked,” Pvt. Dmitry Gagarin of the Russian army told reporters. “My commander burned and died. I ran into the forest and later surrendered to local people.”

Kovalensky said he learned Russia would invade Ukraine only the evening before the tank columns began moving, and that soldiers at the rank of sergeant and lower were not told where they were driving until after crossing the border.
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This gives some idea of the face of battle in Ukraine and how the Russians' advances are being stalled.  The effectiveness of the anti-armor attacks by individual Ukrainian soldiers has been impressive.  I suspect they are using US-supplied weapons. 

One of the interesting aspects of the Russians who were captured is they repeated the same thing other captives have said that they were told they were on an exercise and were not told they were taking part in an invasion of Ukraine.  If true, this could also account for their shock at coming under fire and being captured.