DONETSK, May 3. /TASS/. Ukraine’s military command has stopped training mobilized personnel for assault operations and re-focused on instruction in defense, captured soldier of the Ukrainian army’s 25th separate airborne brigade Valery Zhadan told TASS on Friday.
"Instructors taught us to carry out defensive operations rather than to storm. They instructed us how to move in groups of two or three. But basically they are now training in defensive operations," the prisoner-of-war said.
The POW was captured in the area of the communities of Tonenkoye and Orlovka near Avdeyevka in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in mid-April. He said that mobilized Ukrainian personnel had been assigned the task of holding the first defensive line in that frontline sector, with no more than three soldiers in each position.
As the POW elaborated, the intensity of Russian strikes on Ukrainian army positions was very high and it was hardly probable to hold the positions in these conditions.
"We had already put up with that: what will be, will be. We were abandoned and told: hold the defense and that’s all," he said.
The captured Ukrainian soldier and his two fellow servicemen managed to hold the defense in these conditions for just a couple of days.