Zaporizhia - The mothers of the servicemen of the 51st separate mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian army, who got on the territory of the Russian Federation during a fight in Donbas for unknown reasons and were later interned to Ukraine, have gathered near Military Unit A-1978 in Zaporizhia.
Around 100 women, including the soldiers’ mothers, activists of the
Zaporizhia people’s parliament, and women’s self-defense forces,
gathered near the military unit on Thursday evening, an Interfax-Ukraine
correspondent has reported.
The soldiers’ mothers were accompanied by lawyers, who told reporters
they “will defend the soldiers in a Zaporizhia district court, where a
decision on their detention will be made in the near future because the
Zaporizhia military prosecutor’s office has opened a criminal case
against them based on Part 3 of Article 409 of the Ukrainian Criminal
Code (refusal of military service in combat conditions).
The lawyers said their clients do not consider themselves defects,
are walking freely on the territory of the Zaporizhia military unit and
have refused to leave there before the hearing.
The date of the hearing will be determined in the near future.
The soldiers’ mothers told Interfax-Ukraine their “sons were left in
trenches with nothing, with bare hands, and waited for help for a long
time while under fire from Gad systems.”
“They didn’t have a choice. When the armed militia came, they said
they could level them to the ground and that would be it. And then they
just took them to Russia,” the mother of one soldier said.
According to earlier reports, 41 troops of the 51st brigade were
interned from Russia and taken to Zaporizhia “to determine the reasons
why they entered the territory of a different state” on July 28.
