The 45-year-old Ukrainian was living in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in the eastern region of Donbas, an area under the control of Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.

Despite never handling a weapon before, he signed a document from the Russian authorities that sent him to the trenches ill-equipped and ill-prepared.

“I had no choice… and I feel ashamed,” Yevhen said.

He has since been captured by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), after spending more than a year fighting for the Russians.

The Telegraph was granted access to speak with two prisoners of war, who were recently captured by the AFU as they were fighting in separatist units of the Russian military.

The prisoners’ descriptions of how they were forcibly conscripted – rounded up, handed old Soviet weapons and ordered to shoot without proper training – matches similar accounts from across separatist-held territory in the Donbas.

Before the war, many people living under separatist rule in the DPR or neighbouring Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) were avowedly pro-Russian. The number has dwindled, however, amid reports that the Kremlin used separatist fighters as cannon fodder to protect units recruited from inside Russia.

Civilians in the Donbas have been warning online since last summer that local men were being subjected to “mogilisation”, a play on the Russian word “graves”.

The officers conducting research with the POWs for the AFU said they had spotted “several trends” among the prisoners from the Wagner Group to those fighting with the DPR and LPR.

“They all talk about the extremely terrible treatment they receive from their commanders,” they said.

“They are cannon fodder, without a doubt. That is, they are not people, but simply impersonal instruments for achieving Russia’s goals.”

The officer said several prisoners described themselves as “disposable”, having heard their superiors issue commands to colleagues where they demanded: “Give us a few disposables – we need to do an assault.”

“According to the prisoners we speak to, they are forced to use blocking detachments, which means they cannot retreat, regardless of anything,” one of the senior AFU officers added.

“Otherwise, their own military personnel are shot for not following orders.”

The officer added that the regular Russian army consider themselves to be “gods”, and they are “almost always behind everyone else, on the third line or further back, rarely engage in ‘dirty’ work, do not go to the frontlines, do not dig trenches, [and] have constant rotations and vacations”.

“They are always well-equipped and have everything they need,” he said.

For Yevhen, the equipment he was issued was not only sub-standard, but he was not sufficiently trained on how to fire it.

“We were not respected,” he said, as he dabbed his face with a wet wipe to remove sweat and dirt.

Yevhen explained what happened after he was “rounded up” by Russian forces.

“We were issued with clothes and taught theory,” he said.

“There were theoretical drills on the assembly and disassembly of the assault rifle. That’s it. There was no such tactical training, only theoretical. It was chaos. The Russian army is just destructive and chaotic.”

Yevhen, who worked as an electrician and cared for his elderly mother before the war, criticised the behaviour of his commanders during the occupation of towns and villages in the Donetsk region.

“The commanders were looting a lot,” he said.

“They just cleared out flats because they had equipment to take it all out.”

Now, Yevhen wonders whether being jailed would have been better than signing up to fight.

“Ukrainian troops would have come and freed us,” he said.

“That’s the way it should be. Because it’s just the devastation that’s been left behind by our army – it’s an absolute horror, a disaster.”

As for fighting other people born in Ukraine, he said “it felt disgusting”.

“I won’t take a gun in my hands again, no matter what. If needed, I will go to jail.”

Bohdan (38) said he had a normal office job before he was mobilised.

Both Yevhen and Bohdan maintained that they did not engage in close combat fighting. However, the AFU disputes this, stating that the men were found with machine guns and had been fighting in the trenches when they were captured.

Bohdan claimed that on the day he was mobilised, he left for work as normal, kissing his wife and child goodbye as he headed out the door.

Having arrived at his office shortly after 9am, Russian authorities turned up, and told him and his colleagues they either had to agree to fight or be jailed.

The last time he saw his wife and child was when they came to a sorting office later that day with a number of his documents and a few clothes.

Bohdan has not seen them since.

“I didn’t want to fight. I had no desire, no mood,” he said

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The prisoners’ names have been changed. (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2023)

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