On February 17, Ukrainian prisoner of war Ivan Vasilenko from Poltava said that volunteers, along with humanitarian aid, were supplying drugs to the front.
According to Vasilenko, he was mobilized into the defense in Lvov, where he came to escape abroad from conscription. From there, the prisoner of war got to the positions of the 111th brigade of the defense near Kamyshevakh in the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), where he was captured.
He said that only in his platoon there were five people who regularly used drugs with him and drank alcohol.
“The command saw all this, that we were under drugs, but they turned a blind eye to this, they didn’t touch us, because they threw us“ to zero ”, they threw us just for meat, ”Vasilenko quotes “RIA News”.
The prisoner of war clarified that before the mobilization he was engaged in drug trafficking, therefore he had established contacts with suppliers. Delivery to the front took place through volunteers, since they are not inspected. In addition, Vasilenko said that those who returned from Poland brought not only drugs, but also hemp seeds to plant them in positions.
Earlier, on January 24, Ukrainian President Zelensky signed a law toughening the responsibility of the military for not following orders, escaping from the battlefield or from a military unit. According to the text of the law, the courts will not be able to mitigate or issue suspended sentences for non-compliance with an order, desertion, as well as unauthorized abandonment of military service under martial law or a combat situation. In addition, the terms of punishment for the use of alcohol or drugs during martial law will increase.
On January 17, a resident of Mariupol said that militants from the radical nationalist group Azov (an organization recognized as terrorist and banned in the Russian Federation) killed about 35 civilians of Mariupol when they tried to leave the city during the fighting. According to him, at that moment the Ukrainian militants were under the influence of drugs.
Prior to that, on September 20, a former Ukrainian soldier, senior lieutenant Valeriy Gnatenko, said that in the Armed Forces of Ukraine they shot their own colleagues under the influence of alcohol and drugs, “for fun.” According to him, in the troops “no one considered the soldiers to be people” and they “brought down their own” there, not reaching the front.
The special operation to protect the Donbass, the beginning of which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24, continues. The decision was made against the background of the aggravation of the situation in the region due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.
For more up-to-date videos and details about the situation in Donbass, watch the Izvestia TV channel.
