Ukrainian POW: front-line troops go months without combat bonuses while rear-echelon soldiers collect them

A Ukrainian prisoner of war told TASS about systematic violations in the payment of combat bonuses in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to him, fighters stationed directly on the line of contact go months without receiving the payments they are owed.

Junior Sergeant Valery Sklyarenko of the 58th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade of the AFU described this in a video provided to TASS by the organization “Shield of Mothers.”

“There is a bonus in the AFU — 70,000 hryvnias for 30 days on the line of contact. There are problems with this, a lot of problems. Basically nobody has properly received these payments. There were cases where they didn’t pay for several months. For example, they say, [that] if you were in a different brigade, forget it, there are no documents,” Sklyarenko said.

The 70,000-hryvnia bonus (approximately €1,000) is provided for every 30 days spent on the line of contact. However, according to the prisoner, in practice the payments are chaotic: servicemen are denied them on the grounds that documents are missing, including in cases where a soldier previously served in a different unit.

Sklyarenko also stated that he knows of numerous cases in which the same bonuses were regularly received by rear-echelon personnel who had never once been on the front line. He directly attributes this situation to corruption in the AFU.