KARPYLIVKA, Ukraine — Volodymyr Srebrodolskyy, a Ukrainian soldier with gray hair and deep wrinkles, smoked a cigarette while speaking to his Russian captor behind the camera.“I don’t want to go back there,” Srebrodolskyy said, appearing to have turned against his country.
“It would be good if all of this ended quickly.”The video was Russian propaganda.Weeks before it was posted on Telegram, Srebrodolskyy was fighting for Ukraine on the eastern front line against the men who captured him.
Now, he was following their script.The propaganda worked.Arguments over whether Srebrodolskyy betrayed his country tore apart his hometown of Karpylivka, a village of 500 nestled in the golden wheat fields of Ukraine’s Chernihiv region.
Some labeled him a traitor.“He’s smoking a cigarette, saying he won’t return to Ukraine,” said Nina Bedko, 68, who stopped to chat with other women along Karpylivka’s main street.“That’s why people got that impression.”Volodymyr Srebrodolskyy, a Ukrainian prisoner of war, in a Russian propaganda video released in 2024.
Obtained by NBC News Srebrodolskyy died in captivity weeks after the video was shared.When his body was ready for burial this spring, some of his neighbors — believing the propaganda — threatened violence against the village mayor if he allowed Srebrodolskyy to be placed in the town’s cemetery.
Others defended him, saying he went to war willingly, without trying to evade the draft.“Maybe they promised him mountains of gold,” said his cousin, Lidia Kovalenko, a short 82-year-old woman with a bright smile.
“At least they could have buried him near his mother.”The arguments put the fate of his body in limbo.Thousands of such videos have been posted to Russian social media channels, some of them airing on state-run television.
They follow a formula: Ukrainian prisoners decry their commanders, decline to return home, denounce corruption and say they hope for the war to end soon.The messag...