Over 150 Russians captured on some days of incursion, says Sumy official

Ukraine has captured more than 150 Russian prisoners of war on some days in the cross-border military operation that a key civilian official said was the first of "several stages" in taking the fight to Moscow.

- Dan Sabbagh

Oleksii Drozdenko, the head of the military administration in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, said the attack had fared better than expected and there had been only 15 casualties needing hospital treatment on the first day.

"Sometimes there are more than 100 or 150 prisoners of war a day," Drozdenko said. Many of the Russian troops guarding the border were young conscripts. "They do not want to fight us," he added.

Videos have circulated of Ukrainians capturing prisoners of war, including at the border in the first hours of the incursion on 6 August.

Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said Kyiv is increasing its "exchange fund" to swap for PoWs held by Russia.

Sumy is the Ukrainian city closest to the incursion zone and Drozdenko said he had been closely involved in the operation's planning but had been sworn to secrecy, zipping his lips in a gesture to describe the importance of operational security before the surprise attack.

Other local civilian leaders, notably the Sumy region's governor, Volodymyr Artyukh, have said they were not warned in advance, suggesting Drozdenko was in a trusted circle.

The city official, a Zelenskiy appointee who is Sumy's de facto mayor after the previous incumbent was charged with allegedly receiving a bribe last autumn, said he could not say too much about preparations for the incursion a fortnight ago because there was more to come.