MOSCOW, March 25. /TASS/. The Ukrainian armed forces are increasingly desperate to fill their depleted ranks and are going as far as mobilizing disabled people who have had hands or feet amputated, Nikolay Mozil, a Ukrainian POW, said.

Mozil was advised to go for medical checkups before being mobilized on January 24. "Many doctors were unavailable, so I never received a through checkup. They told me at the military draft office that that was okay and that I would receive treatment if anything goes wrong with me over there. Then I told the draft officers that I was the father of three, and they told me that they were recruiting even people who had had a foot or a hand amputated, <…> so go and fight," the Ukrainian captive said in a video interview released by the Russian Defense Ministry.

According to Mozil, his commanders had advised him to blow himself up on a grenade to avoid capture. "The guide showed us the way to the observation post set up in a crippled IFV [infantry fighting vehicle] as he promised to have us rotated off three days later. And three days later, Russian soldiers approached us quietly and suggested we surrender to stay alive. We were afraid of blowing ourselves up, so we did surrender," the Ukrainian recounted.

He said he was actually surprised to be offered tea or coffee and some food to eat after being taken prisoner by Russian forces. "We were very hungry as we had spent two days without any food, only sharing a single chocolate bar between two of us," the Ukrainian fighter said as he underscored that everything that his commanders had told him about Russian captivity turned out to be wrong.