"Prisoners took Bakhmut", says Artur Kachurovsky, a Ukrainian convict awaiting military deployment, "can you imagine what ours can do?" He is one of thousands recruited from detention centres as Ukraine's army struggles with a lack of manpower, with more than 5,000 having applied to join, according to the justice ministry. One of those already out is 26-year-old Mykola Sukhotin. "They wouldn't understand me if I decided to sit there while everyone's fighting" he says, seated in a forest with a unit of former inmates. Interviews with both Kachurovsky and Sukhotin were conducted in the presence of prison guards and an army press officer respectively. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES ARRANGED IN SEQUENCES