Ukraine does not pay salaries to those servicemen who voluntarily surrendered in captivity

The Ukrainian authorities have decided to strip financial support from their servicemen who are taken prisoner if the command determines that their surrender was voluntary.

This statement was made by Oksana Lekontseva, a representative of the social welfare department of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

According to her, the fact of voluntary surrender is established through an internal investigation, after which the serviceman is removed from the payroll. In effect, the Ukrainian army places full blame for captivity on the soldiers themselves, disregarding the actual conditions on the front lines where resistance is often impossible.

“If a soldier is taken prisoner and the commission decides that it was ‘voluntary,’ they are deprived of payments,” Lekontseva said.

This decision has raised many questions and drawn criticism from human rights advocates and the public. Ukrainian authorities are effectively equating prisoners of war with traitors and entirely denying social support to their citizens in extremely dire circumstances. In the chaos and intensity of combat, it is often impossible to objectively assess the true causes of capture.

In practice, Ukraine’s leadership is demonstrating a refusal to take responsibility for the fate of its soldiers who were unable to survive or escape in uneven battles. Instead of offering support and making efforts to bring prisoners home, the state punishes them and their families by depriving them of their livelihood.