Why this German soldier is in Ukrainian captivity New tensions in the license plate dispute between Serbia and Kosovo

Alexander F. has a tattoo on his shoulder that reveals a lot about him: a pentagon consisting of a stylized oblique K with the letters “CCCP” above it, the Cyrillic version for USSR. It is the former seal for high-quality goods of Soviet production, Alexander F. wears it as a stamp. It has been eight years since F. traveled from Frankfurt to Eastern Ukraine to fight for Greater Russia. At that time, the German-Russian joined the pro-Russian separatists.

Alexander F. is now a prisoner of war in the Ukrainian army, the only one known from Germany so far.

With a black eye in the video

This became known through a video. It first shows images of Alexander F. as a hunter. Then follows a hard cut, a comic panel is shown with the English text “Five hours later”: Now F. can be seen with a swollen face, black eyes and head bandage. He meekly asks to end the fight. The video was recently distributed by the Center for Strategic Communication of Ukraine. This is in violation of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the exhibition of prisoners of war.

The footage of Alexander F. highlights a side of the war about which little is known: Germans fighting on the Russian side and what happens to them when they are taken prisoner by the Ukraine. According to Ukrainian information, about a thousand German fighters are deployed to Russia. There are no actual numbers from the other side.

Some apparently fought in eastern Ukraine before the war broke out, as evidenced by a federal government response to an AfD investigation in 2017. At the time, it disclosed that “26 people reported in Germany” had “shortened evidence of a temporary stay in the crisis area”. All left for eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015, 20 of them in support of the pro-Russian separatists. Alexander F. was apparently one of them.

Alexander F. is from Ukraine

Two returnees were convicted in 2019 on charges of “preparing a serious act of violence dangerous to the state”. One was released with a suspended sentence, the other received two years and three months in prison. Both appeared to have a clear intention “to conduct an armed struggle against the Ukrainian state”. There was no evidence that they had actually fought. In the case of Alexander F., that should be different now.

He was born in 1983 in the Soviet city of Dnepropetrovsk, which no longer bears this Russian name. In Ukrainian it is called Dnipro. It is located on the Dnieper River. As a teenager, Alexander F. moved his family with a German surname to Germany in the mid-1990s, where he lived for 17 years, most recently in the Frankfurt area.

The bond with his old homeland must have been stronger in him before he left for the Donbass. In 2009, he created a group for his old school on a Russian social network. No one posted there as many pictures as Alexander F. «Dnepr». He calls himself “СССР” in the network. “Dnieper” later became his battle name.

There are photos of him with friends in a disco near Mainz in the network. Another photo shows him with his shirt unbuttoned by a stream. In 2013, he had his photo taken in a military uniform while playing paintball. In the same year he also posted a photo with a homemade Walther P22 gas pistol with silencer. The suspected live ammunition did not match the weapon.

Moments later, in the Donbass, he was given ammunition to match the weapons. On July 25, 2014, Alexander F. is now 31 years old, the first photo from Ukraine appears in his profile. It shows him at the entrance to the subway in Kharkov.

Hand was shredded in explosion

It was apparently the images of the Maidan protests of December 2013 and the impeachment of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 that drove Alexander F. to the Donbass. “When the Maidan started, I was already convinced that a civil war would soon break out in our country,” he later said in a video.

In another video in 2018, he lies in a hospital bed after a mortar shell tore his hand. In it, he says he came to the country “so that our children would not learn in school that Bandera is a hero and the avenue of angels would not grow.” Stepan Bandera is a Ukrainian nationalist who, because of his collaboration with the Nazis, is also controversial within Ukraine and is revered as a national hero in parts of the country. The Alley of Angels is a memorial to the children who died in the war in Donbass until 2015.

His goals from then have turned into the opposite. In September, a street in his hometown was renamed Stepan Bandera Street. More children have been killed in this war for months than in any year before. And Alexander F. is in the middle of a battle, which isn’t just Putin’s war.

Alexander F. fought in Mariupol

F. has joined the people’s militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. His new home is the city of Yasynuwata near Donetsk, he writes in a profile on a singles platform and that he wants children. He mentions sports as a hobby and states that he has a “stable average income”. His profile picture cannot be very old, there is a healed scar on his face.

It came from an injury that was still fresh when a photographer captured an impressive photo of Alexander F. in Mariupol in early April 2022. Helmet on, he stands lost in thought among the rubble next to soldiers chatting on the ground. A cloud of breath has formed in the cold air, which is illuminated by the sunlight. A few days later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared Mariupol “completely destroyed”. While the city falls under Russian control, the last troops of the Azovstal Steel Works surrender on May 16.

The battle for Mariupol has been fought and the 9th Marine Regiment of the DNR, to which Alexander F. belongs, is now fighting near Zaporizhzhya, known for the nuclear power plant there. Photos of him then appear in July, when his unit is in Avdiivka at the gates of Donetsk and “liberates” places there. Pro-Russian war correspondents can visit the force. Alina Lipp, Putin’s German propagandist, posts a video of him shooting.

Apparently Ukrainian soldiers took note of the video. On October 17, it appeared on the Telegram channel StratCom UA, spreading success stories and perseverance slogans. This fight scene will be the first part of the before and after video. That he then asks his comrades to stop fighting in the second part with a bandage does not fit with his earlier statements. The presumption is that he does not say that voluntarily. That’s why we don’t show the scene.

German embassy struggles for information

In the messenger service, many users responded with smiling smileys to the video of the injured man wearing a vest in front of the camera, which could also belong to an elderly woman. Such displays and demonstrations by prisoners have been criticized for years by human rights groups for all warring parties.

The video of October 17 is also the last public sign of life of Alexander F. Information about the German citizen in Ukrainian captivity has now also reached the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The German embassy in Kiev is in contact with the Ukrainian authorities to clarify the facts,” explains a spokeswoman in the most beautiful official German. But during the war it is difficult to get information from Kiev, especially when the power goes out for hours every day. The Ukrainian embassy in Germany was also unable to get t-online responses from Ukrainian authorities within days after the defense ministry in Kiev failed to respond at all.

Anyone who might know more is an association of AfD politicians, his name is Vadar. The chairman, former member of the Bundestag Ulrich Öhme, explains in a video that the association is in contact with Alexander F’s mother. “She hopes that she will get her son back in good health.” t-online also contacted the woman who lives in Frankfurt, she read the messages but did not reply. Alexander F’s brother also apparently does not want to respond.

Öhme stated that he would do everything possible to ensure that the German authorities could visit the prisoner. The association strongly condemns the actions of the Ukrainian army against prisoners.

The association has not yet condemned Russian war crimes or death sentences for Ukrainian prisoners of the DNR militias. The club did not answer any question. (cf.)