War in Ukraine: kyiv claims to have received more than 6,500 calls from Russian soldiers wanting to surrender

More than 6,500 Russian soldiers have contacted Ukrainian forces in recent months to surrender, reports the guardian. Vitaly Matvienko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian prisoners of war department, told the British newspaper that they had been in contact through a call center called “I Want to Live” (“I want to live” in French, editor’s note). All were identified as Russian army fighters, according to Vitaly Matvienko.

These calls, issued by these Russian soldiers, are counted as surrender calls, most of them even coming from the front line according to the Ukrainian authorities.

“During the liberation of Kherson, we received calls from Russians saying ‘save us […] our battalion is totally crushed, we have 10 soldiers left, please get us out of this mess,” Vitaly Matvienko told the guardian.

The hotline was recently moved to a secret location to prevent Russian interference, which has received no fewer than 6,543 requests from Russian military personnel since September 15, when the hotline was installed. A decision made when Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization with the withdrawal of 300,000 Russian reservists to face the counteroffensive in Kyiv. the guardian however, it specifies that it is not in a position to confirm these figures.

Exchanged for Ukrainians or detained

While Vitaly Matvienko declined to say how many Russian soldiers had surrendered after these calls, he told the guardian that the service -managed by a dozen people and operating 24 hours a day- was a “success”.

Website “I want to live” it also lists 2 million hits in the month of December alone, three-quarters coming from Russian-based IP addresses. Russian soldiers who surrendered via this hotline are offered the chance to take part in future organized prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine or, alternatively, remain in detention with the possibility of staying in Ukraine later or emigrating.

The Russian government has released a total of 1,646 Ukrainian personnel as part of the prisoner exchanges, according to Ukrainian authorities. The last prisoner exchange between Kyiv and Moscow took place on January 8.