MOSCOW, September 13. /TASS/. A Ukrainian militant named Vitaly, who fought in the Kievan Rus nationalist battalion and is serving time in prison in one of Russia’s regions, told TASS that NATO and the EU have been "flooding" Ukraine with arms for eight years, ideologically preparing it for a war with Russia.

"Since 2014, for eight years, NATO and the EU have been ‘flooding’ us with weapons, everybody knew this, that we were being brainwashed, prepared for a conflict which has now morphed into a special military operation. I was aware that all of this was going on. The government was imposing its views on us: The May 9 Victory Day was moved to May 8. In our district, we used to have Russian-language schools, they switched to Ukrainian. [The Ukrainian media] says that everything Russia-related is bad. It pains me to see what is going on with my country," the POW said.

He noted that the Ukrainian media outlets have been deliberately shaping Russia’s negative image. "From 2015 through 2018, all the remaining Soviet-era warehouses were systematically destroyed or blown up. The news outlets were saying it was Russian sabotage, anyone killed anywhere was also pinned on Russia, the brainwashing was underway. An entire generation was zombified, literature changed, books, even geography: Lake Baikal now belongs to China; Kuban, the Kursk and Rostov regions are Ukrainian territory," the former Ukrainian militant noted.

That said, according to him, Ukraine was bolstering its lines of defense. "If you look at the lines of defense on a map, for ten years, they have been reinforced with concrete, they were getting ready for all of this," he noted.

EU handlers

According to the prisoner, Ukrainian militants were regularly receiving humanitarian aid from various countries and people at the frontline never lacked for anything.

"In Canada, in Toronto, there is a very large Ukrainian community, Spain, all of Europe, Turkey [were sending aid]. Each brigade has three or four cities in Europe as sponsors. Say, there wasn’t enough of something - knee-guards, armor vests, body armor inserts - we wrote to volunteers and they shipped it to us within a week, there was enough of everything. We were receiving new weapons, SUVs, enhanced tanks," Vitaly explained.

He also noted that foreign instructors trained Ukrainian troops. "We went to West Ukraine, we were trained there by hired Western instructors," the former Ukrainian militant added.

Vitaly, a Ukrainian serviceman, received a summons in 2017. He was assigned to the punitive territorial defense unit of the Ukrainian Kievan Rus armed formation and was required to sign a three-year contract. He participated in combat operations against the militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) but surrendered after the onset of the special military operation.

The Judicial Board for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) sentenced him to five years and six months of incarceration for his involvement in a terrorist organization. He is currently serving his sentence in a Russian prison.