Ukrainian forces capture Kadyrov's troops, shock Russian conscripts

The "I Want to Live" project has published a recording showing several dozen Kadyrovites captured in Kursk Oblast, Russia. "Ukrainian raiding groups caught them deep in the rear," the communiqué reads. They abandoned the conscripts defending the Russian border on the day of the Ukrainian attack.

The "I Want to Live" project was launched in September 2022 and aimed at Russian soldiers who want to surrender to the Ukrainian army voluntarily. The program operates under the auspices of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

On Sunday afternoon, the channel published a recording showing several dozen captured Kadyrovites.

"And here are those to whom the mothers of the abandoned Russian conscripts should 'thank' first and foremost. The raiding groups caught these Kadyrovites deep in the rear of the border. They tried to escape to avoid being captured, as Ramzan Kadyrov once said that the warriors of Akhmat would not surrender. Well, usually that's true because they sit in the rear, but in the Kursk Oblast, the situation developed dynamically, and these fighters didn't even try to resist," the communiqué reads.

The "I Want to Live" project believes that Kadyrov's PR efforts and the desire to protect his guards from hostilities are costing Russians dearly.

"If they defended the border instead of hiding behind conscripts on the tenth line near Kursk, such a rapid breakthrough would have been impossible. But at the border, there were only ordinary 18-year-old conscripts and border guards. They also decided not to participate in the battle and voluntarily surrendered, saving their lives," it reads.

The information provided by the "I Want to Live" project is confirmed by the accounts of conscripts defending the border on the day of the Ukrainian attack on Kursk Oblast.

"I am a conscript. I was stationed near the village of Sverdlikovo. At the neighboring post was Akhmat. When we were surrounded, they fled because Kadyrov ordered the Chechens not to be captured," said 22-year-old Yevgeny Kovylkin from Belgorod Oblast.

Russians are shocked that inexperienced and untrained conscripts guarded the border. According to unofficial information, there were between 100 and 150 conscripts at the border on the day of the attack. Today, many of them are out of contact. They either died, fled, or were taken into Ukrainian captivity.

"They promised I would be in the Moscow region, in a tank battalion, and that I would not even approach the border, but ultimately it turned out to be not the case at all," concludes another captured conscript.

More on the matter, we wrote here:

The case is shocking because dictator Vladimir Putin himself promised the mothers that the conscripts—their sons—would not participate in active combat and would not be sent to the front. Since the attack on Kursk Oblast, the families of conscripts have been massively posting online appeals for help in finding their loved ones.