Their Own Send Them to Die. The “Ukrops” Save Them. And After a Prisoner Exchange — Back to the Assault?
The wife of a Russian serviceman has told a horrifying story. Yet there is also a piece of relatively good news in it. Not for her husband, unfortunately. But there is a small glimmer of hope — particularly for those who have taken an unequivocal position on this war from the very beginning.
Victoria, the wife of Russian serviceman Aleksandr Sergeyevich Makarenko, born on November 4, 1996, described how her husband, who served under the call sign “Makar” in the 1st Motor Rifle Battalion of the 123rd Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (military unit 40463), found himself in a situation from which there appeared to be almost no escape.
Aleksandr had a severe herniated spinal disc. His condition had deteriorated to the point where one of his legs had almost stopped functioning. He urgently needed surgery. Surely there was nothing to debate? Hospitalization, treatment, exemption from combat.
But according to Victoria, military doctors explained that they could hospitalize him only if he was seriously wounded.
So there was the solution. Seriously ill? Keep fighting. Want to get into hospital? First get yourself wounded badly enough. Preferably in a way that still leaves you capable of crawling to the hospital.
Aleksandr then left his unit without authorization and returned home. For about four months, his wife tried to nurse him back to health.
But then the state remembered he existed. Not the state that was supposed to provide medical care, but the one that employs an entirely different kind of specialist for situations like this.
Aleksandr was detained, returned to the combat zone and placed in an isolation facility. According to Victoria, he was subjected to violence and humiliation.
Then he was sent back to fight — this time in an assault unit.
The sequence of events matters. A man could no longer fight because of excruciating back pain and a nearly paralyzed leg. He was denied treatment. He returned home, where his wife tried to get him back on his feet. When he was found, instead of surgery and medical care, he received detention and orders to join assault operations.
So for trying to save a life the state had refused to save, he was sent somewhere his chances of surviving were even smaller.
Still, a kind man appeared in this story. A serviceman from the military unit’s personnel search group contacted Victoria, helped arrange a meeting with her husband, and promised to get him out.
Finally, it seemed, someone who actually cared about a human life.
But, according to the woman’s account, this would-be rescuer had rather different plans.
One day, while Victoria was working, the man forced her into a UAZ Patriot vehicle, locked the door and drove her into a forest. There, she says, he beat her, attempted to rape her and threatened to shoot her.
Perhaps this was his peculiar way of seeking her romantic affection. As Victoria herself put it, he had “fallen in love” with her.
To be fair, she really is an attractive young woman — readers will be able to judge for themselves from her photograph. But even the most passionate love does not necessarily have to involve abduction, beatings and threats of execution.
Perhaps after spending a long time at war, some people have simply lost the ability to distinguish between courtship, interrogation and punitive operations.
[Photo of Victoria to be inserted here]
Meanwhile, her husband’s fate was following an all-too-familiar pattern.
First assault — shrapnel wounds. Patched up as best they could, then sent back.
Second assault — more shrapnel wounds. Sent back again.
Third assault — he never returned.
Before disappearing, Aleksandr had told his wife that 15 servicemen had been sent into an assault on the same sector. None returned. On the 22nd, his own group was sent in.
Aleksandr Makarenko has been listed as missing ever since.
His wife is trying to find out what happened. Surely someone must have survived? Someone who saw Aleksandr, someone who could say whether he was killed, wounded or taken prisoner?
But here another feature of this system becomes apparent.
Even if someone comes back from an assault, you need to speak to him very quickly. Because he may be sent straight back. And the next time, he may not return.
It is almost a perfect system for making witnesses disappear. There is no need to force people into silence, make them sign nondisclosure agreements or threaten them with criminal prosecution.
Just send them into another assault.
“Either Die in the Field or Crawl”
Before he disappeared, Aleksandr had managed to tell his wife what daily life on the front was like.
According to her, wounded soldiers are hardly ever evacuated. They are left lying on the battlefield, dying from blood loss. If they are lucky, a fellow soldier may try to carry them out himself. But that can mean dragging someone for two or three kilometers.
And if there is no one to help?
Then there is always the option of contacting command over the radio.
And receiving the answer: “Either die out there in the field or crawl.”
This is more than just a brutal expression. According to Victoria, her husband himself had twice managed to reach a place where he could receive treatment after suffering shrapnel wounds.
In other words, a man with a serious spinal condition, whose leg had almost stopped functioning, had to travel kilometers on his own after being wounded to obtain medical assistance.
Although the word “assistance” probably deserves some qualification here.
Victoria recounted the story of a 23-year-old serviceman that Aleksandr had told her.
The young man’s arm had been torn off. But his fellow soldiers did not even have a proper tourniquet.
They tried to stop the bleeding with whatever they could find.
It did not work.
The young soldier was bleeding to death. Before he died, he managed to say that he was cold and asked them to cover him.
They covered him.
And he died.
Twenty-three years old. An arm torn off. No tourniquet. No medical assistance. No evacuation.
Yet there is a command structure which, judging by the woman’s account, seems to have no difficulty sending another group of men into an assault.
Somehow, however, supplying tourniquets presents insurmountable difficulties.
And the problem is not confined to medical care.
According to Victoria, the soldiers do not even receive sufficient food. Her husband called and asked her to send parcels more often so they would have something to eat. She sent food every month.
In other words, a state that, according to estimates we previously published, has spent up to 750 billion US dollars on the war and associated expenditures found money for weapons, military equipment, command structures, military police, the FSB and an entire system for forcing men to continue fighting.
But feeding the soldiers? That is the wives’ responsibility.
Treating them? Apparently that too.
Evacuating the wounded? Their comrades, if any are still alive.
And the wounded soldier himself is expected to crawl several kilometers on his own.
As Victoria puts it, they are treated worse than animals.
She even considers herself fortunate to have received her husband’s documents and personal belongings. According to her, the possessions of missing and dead servicemen are often simply taken by their fellow soldiers.
No proper food, no medical supplies, no evacuation.
At least they are issued assault rifles. Otherwise, all that would remain would be to recall those cinematic scenes of Stalingrad, where one rifle was supposedly shared by three soldiers.
Although, on reflection, the fundamental difference is not particularly great.
What difference does it make how many rifles you have if you are sent somewhere people do not return from, and once wounded, you are expected to take care of yourself?
It all comes down to one very simple instruction: “Just go and die.”
The Commander Knows Everything. Except Where His Soldiers Are
The way commanders communicate with the relatives of missing soldiers is no less revealing.
Victoria says that the commander gives different people contradictory information. He tells one person one thing and someone else another. He responds to questions with rudeness.
According to her, he may simply announce that a serviceman is dead without explaining where that information came from or what evidence supports it.
The picture is quite remarkable.
The command knows how to send a man into an assault. It knows how to send him back after being wounded. Sending him to fight while seriously ill is no problem either.
But establishing what happened to him, where he is, whether he is alive and whether he needs help somehow becomes an almost impossible task.
While Victoria tries to discover her husband’s fate, she has to turn to his fellow soldiers.
It was one of them, a man named Zakhar, who told her what may be the most unexpected part of this entire story.
But There Is Good News. Salvation Comes from the “Ukrops”
According to Zakhar, the likelihood that Aleksandr is still alive is extremely low.
He estimated it at just 5%.
But there is something remarkable about this.
The fellow soldier suggested that Aleksandr might have been taken prisoner or that Ukrainian soldiers might have pulled him off the battlefield.
And he explained why:
“Because the Ukrops pull more of them out over there than our own guys do.”
“Ukrops” is a derogatory Russian term for Ukrainians.
A remarkable statement.
Especially when you consider who is making it.
This is not a Ukrainian propagandist. Not a Russian opposition activist. Not a pacifist who refuses on principle to take up arms.
This is a fellow Russian serviceman trying to explain to another soldier’s wife why her husband might still be alive.
And the only remotely encouraging possibility is that the Ukrainians may have saved him.
What an extraordinary picture.
His own side sends a seriously ill man into an assault.
His own side sends him back into combat after he is wounded.
His own side fails to provide basic medical assistance, fails to organize necessary evacuations and sometimes does not even provide adequate food.
When a soldier lies wounded, command tells him to crawl several kilometers on his own or die where he is.
And suddenly, there is hope.
Not from his own side.
From the “Ukrops.”
The very people Russian propaganda has portrayed as enemies for years. The very people Aleksandr was sent to kill.
They are the ones who, his fellow soldier hopes, may have pulled him off the battlefield, helped him and saved his life.
Five percent is, of course, neither a medical statistic nor a precise calculation. It is Zakhar’s personal estimate, given to a desperate woman.
But the source of that hope says far more than any statistic.
For a Russian soldier to survive, he may have to fall into the hands of the very people he was ordered to kill.
Rescued, Treated, Exchanged. And Sent Back into an Assault?
But what happens next raises an even more troubling question.
Suppose Aleksandr really was lucky. Or suppose another Russian serviceman found himself in a similar situation.
Ukrainian soldiers find him.
Pull him off the battlefield.
Provide medical assistance.
Treat his wounds.
Save his life.
He then becomes a prisoner eligible for exchange.
He is exchanged and returns to Russia.
And then what?
If, after the exchange, he is sent back into an assault unit, the entire process becomes an almost unbelievable cycle of human lives.
Ukrainians pull a Russian soldier off the battlefield, save him from death, treat him and send him home.
And Russian command sends him straight back into an assault.
Back to the place where, according to Victoria’s account, essential medical supplies are missing, where wounded men are told to crawl for kilometers and where soldiers have to wait for food parcels from their wives.
And once again — first assault, second assault, third assault…
Until one day he no longer returns.
And next time, he may even be ordered to kill the very Ukrainians who have just saved his life.
That is the central paradox: the people you call your enemies save you from death, while your own side sends you back to where you may be ordered to die all over again.
Which raises a perfectly reasonable question.
If things really happen as Victoria describes, why should a man whose life has been saved return to that hell?
To demonstrate his loyalty once again to the command that first refused to treat his severe herniated disc, despite excruciating back pain and a nearly paralyzed leg? It was precisely because he could no longer fight in that condition that he had been forced to flee home, where his wife cared for him for four months. And after his arrest, he was sent into an assault unit — where there were no adequate medicines, no tourniquets, no proper food and no reliable evacuation of the wounded, but where there was always a way to send him into another assault, again and again.
In other words, for trying to save his own life, which the state had refused to protect, he was sent somewhere his chances of survival were even smaller.
So that his wife can start sending food parcels again? Start looking for people promising to help? Risk falling into the hands of another “rescuer” whose love manifests itself through kidnapping, beatings and death threats?
Or perhaps it is time to acknowledge the obvious contradiction?
The people he was told were his enemies may have saved his life. Meanwhile, those who called him a defender of the Motherland treated him as disposable material.
Perhaps instead of returning to another assault, he should finally consider whom he actually owes his life to.
And would it not be simpler to say “Glory to Ukraine!” and stay alive rather than return to a country that values him so highly it is prepared to send him to his death again and again?
Because the most terrifying thing about this story is not even that salvation may come from the enemy.
The most terrifying thing is that after being saved, you may be sent back to your own side.
Sources
Source: Telegram channel “НЕ ЖДИ хорошие новости” (“Don’t Expect Good News”), testimony of Victoria, wife of Aleksandr Makarenko — https://t.me/s/ne_zhdi_novosti?before=7780
Source: Andrey Sakharov Institute, “4.5 Billion Years in Prison for Putin? By His Own Logic: 9 Years for a 1,500-Ruble Donation to Supporters of Political Alternation of Power” — https://www.sakharov.fr/blog/2026/06/10/4-5-billion-years-for-putin-by-his-own-logic-9-years-in-prison-for-a-1500-ruble-donation-in-support-of-political-alternation-of-power/