Russia forms Ukrainian Volunteer Spetsnaz Brigade to fight Ukraine

Russia's Ministry of Defence has merged five irregular combat formations into a single new brigade, Ukrainian Volunteer Spetsnaz, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), in a move that Ukrainian officials and independent monitors say formalises a years-long practice of pushing Ukrainian prisoners of war into frontline combat roles.

The Russian MoD's Volunteer Corps announced this week that it had folded the Maxim Krivonos and Alexei Berest battalions, along with the Alexander Matrosov, Martyn Pushkar, and Slobodskoy detachments, into a single unit it calls the "first Ukrainian Volunteer Spetsnaz Brigade." ISW, which tracks daily developments in the war, reported the consolidation on August 6, noting that all five constituent units are believed to draw their manpower from Ukrainian POWs and soldiers who allegedly defected to Russian forces.
Notably, Russian military bloggers did not mention that the brigade depends on captured Ukrainian personnel units officially, and maintains the "volunteer" branding. But ISW has reported that they were Prisoners of War.

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According to ISW, this is not Russia's first attempt at building combat units from captured soldiers. It reportedly first documented efforts to coerce Ukrainian POWs into military service in November 2022, within the war's first year. A more organised version of the practice surfaced in December 2023, when Russian-backed authorities in the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic" stood up the "Bogdan Khmelnitsky" battalion, composed of Ukrainian captives, under the "Kaskad" formation in western Donetsk region.
The newly announced brigade appears to represent a scaling-up of that approach, consolidating scattered POW-linked units under a single, brigade-level command structure.

The Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War prohibits a detaining power from forcing captured soldiers to take part in military operations, and separately bars holding or employing POWs under conditions that expose them to direct combat.
Kyiv has taken steps to hold Russian officials accountable for the treatment of captured soldiers, including sanctions against Russian judges accused of handing down staged convictions to Ukrainian POWs. Ukrainian officials say thousands of Ukrainian personnel remain in Russian captivity, with abuse against them well documented by international monitors.