As of December 2023, more than 220 Russian soldiers have already taken advantage of the opportunity to surrender to Ukrainian captivity through the “I Want to Live” hotline. This was reported by the representative of the Prisoners of War Department of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Vitaly Matviyenko, in an interview with the Financial Times. It is noted that more than 1,000 cases are currently under consideration.
The hotline was launched in September 2022, as soon as partial mobilization was announced in Russia. Since then, approximately three Russian soldiers have been captured each week. In total, the hotline has received over 26,000 calls and messages via the Telegram chatbot, and the hochuzhit.com website has been visited over 48 million times, 46 million of which are from Russia.
The “I Want to Live” hotline is staffed by 10 operators from a secret center in Kyiv, including military psychologists and analysts. It is worth noting that one of the significant spikes in calls from Russian soldiers occurred in November 2022, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated Kherson from occupation. There was also a spike in calls last spring, during preparations for the counteroffensive in March 2023, when the number of applications almost doubled compared to December 2022.
