I Want to Live (; ) is a
hotline
A hotline is a point-to-point communications link in which a call is automatically directed to the preselected destination without any additional action by the user when the end instrument goes off-hook. An example would be a phone that automat ...
for receiving appeals from
Russian servicemen in
Ukraine. Operated by the
Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, the service is designed to help Russian servicemen who do not want to participate in the
Russian invasion of Ukraine to safely surrender to the
Ukrainian Armed Forces. The project guarantees the detention of surrendering military personnel in accordance with the
Geneva Conventions.
Process
According to the official website of the project, there are several methods by which a Russian serviceman can submit an appeal and
surrender. These include calling the round-the-clock hotline, or following instructions from a
chatbot on the
Telegram channel of the project. Shortly after the launch of the project,
Russian officials blocked access to it from the country's territory.
For those who have surrendered, Ukrainians offer the opportunity to take part in a
prisoner exchange organized between the governments of Russia and Ukraine, or to remain temporarily in detention with the possibility of staying in Ukraine or
emigrating
Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanentl ...
later.
History
On September 18, the coordination headquarters for the treatment of
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
, as a continuation of the project designed to encourage the surrender of Russian personnel, launched a special state project with a 24-hour hotline for receiving appeals from the Russian military and their families called "I want to Live."
By October 5, 2022, it was reported that the hotline had already had its first successful use in assisting the surrender of a Russian serviceman to the
Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Russian soldier who surrendered had been mobilized immediately after the announcement of
partial mobilization in Russia.
During the first month of the project, more than three thousand calls from Russian military personnel were processed. By December 2022, a spokesperson for the program said it had processed over 4,300 direct requests for information on how to surrender.
On 4 May 2023, the hotline's spokesperson, Vitaliy Matvienko, stated that it received requests to surrender from 3,200 Russian soldiers in April 2023, representing a 10% increase over March 2023. He added that the hotline had received a total of 16,000 requests to surrender since its inception. Its website had been accessed over 36 million times, 32 million visits of which were made from the territory of Russia.
See also
*
Look for Your Own
Look for Your Own (russian: Ищи своих, ''Ishchi Svoikh'') is an Internet project created on the initiative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ukraine), Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine to identify captured or killed soldiers of ...
*
Treatment of prisoners of war in the Russian invasion of Ukraine § Russian prisoners of war
Notes
References
{{2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Reactions
Russian invasion of Ukraine
Telephone numbers in Ukraine
Ukrainian websites
Ukrainian responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
2022 establishments in Ukraine