Russian soldier captured in the Donbas
One of the LPR militants who were captured on June 24 near to Zhelobok turned out to be the Russian soldier Viktor Ageyev, drafted in the Altai Krai, who served on a contract basis, writes BBC citing the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and the command of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).
The mother and friends of Viktor Ageyev confirmed that after his compulsory service, Viktor served in the army on the basis of a contract which he signed in March 2017.
Intelligence officer Viktor Ageyev, born in 1995, was captured on June 24 following an encounter of fighters from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade and a reconnaissance group of the 4th Mechanized Brigade of the 2nd Army Corps of the LPR (Luhansk People’s Republic).
While commenting on the details of the fight with the LPR’s subversive-reconnaissance group, brigade commander Vladislav Klochkov said that during the encounter, the commander of LPR’s group was killed. The killed commander was regular officer Alexander Shcherbak. The Ukrainian Military headquarters also announced that four LPR fighters had been captured, including a “22 year old Russian citizen, a resident of the Altai Krai”.
A photograph of the captured soldier’s passport and military passbook was published on the Facebook page of ICTV journalist Yulia Kirienko.
According to the information in the military passbook, Viktor Ageyev received secondary vocational education in the Altai State College, specializing as a third class electro gas welder. After completing his studies, he did his compulsory military service in military unit 65246, which is based in Novocherkassk in the Rostov province. He subsequently went to serve in military intelligence on a contractual basis.
Viktor Ageyev also posted on April 1 on his VKontakte (Russian Social Network) page about beginning contractual service. His account on the social network was not under his real name (Ageyev’s acquaintances confirmed the authenticity of the account), and belonged, most notably, to the 4th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the LPR People’s Militia group.
There, and also on his page on the social network Odnoklassniki, he published several of his own photographs with the military intelligence insignia, and also several of his photos in positions with weapons, and without identification markings.
In personal correspondence with a former colleague, when asked whether he was in Ukraine, Viktor Ageyev responded: “Yes, in Ukraine”. When asked what he was doing there, he wrote: “Contractor. Paid enough.”
Journalists contacted Viktor Ageyev’s mother, who identified the documents in the AFU’s possession as belonging to her son.
“I’m worried because he hasn’t contacted me for a very long time,” Svetlana Ageyeva explained, “the last time he called me was on May 30”.
According to her, on the 18th of March 2017 her son signed a contract, and her son’s new location was Bataysk in the Rostov province, where the 22nd special forces brigade of Russia’s Main Intelligence Department was based. Svetlana Ageyeva said that no one from the command had contacted the captured soldier’s family yet.
According to the BBC’s sources in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, the detained soldier has currently been transferred to the Security Service of Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry did not make any comment to BBC regarding the news that the Russian contractor Viktor Ageyev was captured in Ukrainian territory.