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The Bohdan Khmelnytsky Battalion (also spelled in a Russian form as Bogdan Khmelnitsky Battalion) is a so-called volunteer battalion of Russia composed of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs). Russian state media has claimed that its members are Ukrainian (POWs) who were "recruited" from Russian penal colonies.
The Institute for the Study of War noted in February 2025 that Russia had mostly exhausted its prison population in 2022 and 2023 and could no longer generate significant forces from inmates. It also noted that the Russian government deprived prisoners who volunteer to fight in Ukraine of one-time enlistment bonuses starting January 1, 2025. [16]
However, some other historians, such as Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär claimed that almost all returning Soviet POWs were convicted of collaboration and treason and sentenced to the various forms of forced labour, [19] while admitting that it would be unlikely to study the full extent of the history of the Soviet prisoners of war. [19]
The first POW camps were formed in the European part of the USSR. By the end of World War II, the Soviet Union amassed a huge number of German and Japanese and other Axis Powers POW, estimated over 5 million [1] (of which estimated 15% died in captivity [2]), as well as interned German civilians used as part of the reparations.
The following is a list of prisoner-of-war camps in the Soviet Union during World War II. The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War in 1929. Polish POWs
Another 10,000 Soviet officers were accommodated in XI-B. [2] In late 1941 the SS separated out the senior officers, Communist Party officials and Jews from the Soviet POW, and sent them to the concentration camps at Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme. [1] By November 1941 there were about 11,000 Soviet POW in XI-D, and some huts were built.
The battalion, according to Russian state-controlled media, was created in February 2023 in the Russian-occupied part of Donetsk Oblast. [8] The formation's alleged commander, Andrii Tyshchenko, told RIA Novosti that they had recruited around 70 Ukrainian POWs in February alone. [9]
Russian state media has claimed that the battalion has "recruited" roughly 70 Ukrainian POWs in February alone. However some sources state that up to 200 Ukrainian POWs have joined the battalion [65] It was reported that members of the battalion have begun training and will begin fighting in "an unspecified area of the front line" when they are ...