Special report: Testimonies of freed Ukrainians reveal horrors of war and captivity

Updated 24 March 2023

Special report: Testimonies of freed Ukrainians reveal horrors of war and captivity

Special Special report: Testimonies of freed Ukrainians reveal horrors of war and captivity
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Capt. Oleksandr Demchenko, an anesthetist, in a makeshift basement hospital during the Azovstal siege in Mariupol. (Supplied)
Special Special report: Testimonies of freed Ukrainians reveal horrors of war and captivity
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Lyudmila Huseynova waived her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual violence in order to draw attention to the alleged crimes committed by rebels in Donbas prior to the invasion. (AN photo: Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Special Special report: Testimonies of freed Ukrainians reveal horrors of war and captivity
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Some of the Ukrainian soldiers who were released in a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine on Sept. 21, 2022. (Ukrainian Security service Press Office via AP)
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  • Capt. Oleksandr Demchenko, taken captive in May 2022 in Mariupol, recounted his experience of 127 days of incarceration
  • Lyudmila Huseynova, a former safety engineer in Donetsk, waived her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual violence

KYIV: When the last group of Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the Azovstal steelworks surrendered to Russian forces in May 2022, it marked the end of a ferocious three-month siege of the defenders’ last stronghold in Mariupol.

Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and international volunteers were transferred to a prison colony in Russian-controlled territory, where officials insisted that they would be treated in line with international norms for prisoners of war.

Among them was Capt. Oleksandr Demchenko, an anesthetist who had been working in a makeshift basement hospital during the closing weeks of the siege. He was taken captive on May 18 during a mission to bring supplies and reinforcements to Azovstal.

“I say I have three lives,” Demchenko told Arab News in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, recalling the events — the heavy shelling and falling captive to the Russian forces — almost a year after the fall of Mariupol. “One before my capture, one during, and now the one after.”

Demchenko was among around 300 POWs (including 10 foreigners) released in a prisoner swap brokered by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkiye on Sept. 21 last year. Now slowly recovering from his ordeal, Demchenko has shared his story with Arab News.

 

 

Mariupol became a symbol of some of the worst violence of the war to date. Moscow recognized the coastal city’s strategic importance as a stepping stone in building a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

The Azovstal steelworks, covering an area of about 4 square miles, including a warren of underground tunnels, became a final holdout where thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers perished in some of the most brutal urban warfare of the past century.

From his underground field hospital, Demchenko operated on wounded soldiers until the Russian onslaught finally overran Ukrainian positions. “They were throwing everything they had at us,” he said.

By that point, the Ukrainian defenders were running low on food, ammunition and medicine. “If I had half a cup of water, I’d call it a good day,” said Demchenko, recalling the privation of those final days in Azovstal.

Following their capture, the POWs were taken to Olenivka, an abandoned prison only recently reopened by the pro-Russian separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. There, rooms made to house 150 people were crammed with 800 prisoners.


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According to Demchenko, meals consisted of rotten bread and water drawn from the river. He lost 45 kilograms during his 127 days of incarceration in Olenivka, where prisoners were watched and interrogated by a rotating contingent of guards.

Demchenko said he spent his first month and a half in the prison asleep out of sheer exhaustion from the last stand at Azovstal.

“I kept my mind going, I kept making plans for the future,” he said. “My mental state was fine, but I was starting to worry that my body wouldn’t survive for long.”

Several former inmates of Olenivka, officially known as Correctional Colony No. 120, have detailed allegations of beatings, torture, forced labor, and the denial of food and medical care.




Prisoners of war (five British citizens, one Moroccan, one Swede, one Croat, and two Americans) are seen in the tarmac after arriving, following successful mediation efforts by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, from Russia to King Khalid International Airport, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, September 21, 2022. (SPA)

On July 29, the prison became notorious when more than 50 Ukrainian POWs were reportedly killed in a blast that both Russia and Ukraine accuse the other of carrying out, with many of the inmates burning to death.

Russia claimed Ukraine had fired US-supplied HIMARS rockets at the prison to deliberately kill its own POWs. Ukraine denied Russia’s claims, accusing Moscow of carrying out the killings to cover up its maltreatment of prisoners.

An independent inquiry is yet to take place.

In September, rumors began circulating among inmates that they would soon be transferred. When the day finally came for the prisoners to move, Demchenko’s body had been so ravaged by malnutrition that he had been reduced to skin and bone.

Following a flight, the prisoners were transferred to a train bound for Belarus. It was during this train journey that Demchenko realized he was being freed when a man walked into the carriage and told them in Ukrainian: “Guys, it’ll be over soon.”

Upon his release, Demchenko said he immediately called his family. Instead of saying hello he greeted them with the wartime salutation: “‘Slava Ukraini’ — ‘Glory to Ukraine.’

“They asked: ‘Who is this?’” said Demchenko. “I laughed and told them: ‘Have you forgotten me so soon?’”

Since the Sept. 21 prisoner swap, exchanges have become a common feature of the war, which has dragged on for more than a year now. Some 1,863 women and men have been released since Russia launched what it called a “special military operation” on Feb. 24, 2022.

Thousands, however, remain imprisoned in conditions said to be at odds with international humanitarian law, including the Third Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs adopted in August 1949.

According to the convention, POWs must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the detaining power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a POW in its custody is prohibited, and, if it occurs, is regarded as a serious breach of the convention.

FASTFACTS

• On Sept. 21, 2022, Russia and Ukraine carried out a prisoner swap involving almost 300 people, including 10 foreigners and the commanders who led a Ukrainian defense of Mariupol.

• The swap, which involved help from Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, resulted in the release of 215 Ukrainians, most of whom were captured after the fall of Mariupol.

• The freed Ukrainians included Lt. Col. Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov battalion; his deputy, Svyatoslav Palamar; and Serhiy Volynsky, the commander of the 36th Marine Brigade.

The convention also obliges all parties to an international armed conflict to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all prisoners of war and the right to visit them wherever they are held. Russia and Ukraine are both parties to the treaty.

Senior Russian officials and diplomats have repeatedly rejected accusations of criminal violence against civilians in Ukraine, denied use of torture or other forms of maltreatment of POWs, and countered with their own allegations of war crimes. 

“The special military operation takes place in accordance with the fundamental provisions of the UN Charter, which gives states the right for legitimate self-defense in the event of a threat of use of force, which we have exercised,” Sergei Kozlov, the Russian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, wrote in an Arab News oped in February. 

“As you can see, Russia follows the true spirit of international law, not some kind of ‘rules-based order,’ arbitrarily introduced by the West and its henchmen.”

While thousands of soldiers on both sides have been taken captive since February 2022, detentions and alleged maltreatment in captivity was not reserved for military personnel alone. For many Ukrainian civilians in the east of the country, the ordeal began as far back as 2014.

Lyudmila Huseynova once worked as a safety engineer at a poultry farm in Novoazovsk in Donetsk. When Russian-backed separatists seized her town in 2014, she did not conceal her opposition.

Furthermore, Huseynova became heavily involved in helping to resettle families displaced by the fighting and took care of children in local orphanages.

“I saw the state of the children. They were starving,” Huseynova told Arab News at an apartment building in Kyiv, where she has since resettled.

“At the time there was no allocation of funds in the budget to help them as the budget was strained. I couldn’t fathom leaving them behind, so I stayed.”

Huseynova’s world was turned upside down in October 2019 when one evening, while her husband was away in Kharkiv, there came a knock on the door and a group of men barged into her home.

“I kept thinking why they were muddying the house I had just cleaned with their dirty boots,” said Huseynova.

With her hands bound and a bag placed over her head, she was put in the back of a car and driven to another location for interrogation.

“I thought it was absurd,” she said, recalling her abduction. “I have always been vocal, on and offline, for years now. They used my public Facebook posts, the Ukrainian flag in my home, my books, and accused me of being a ‘nationalist.’”

Huseynova was taken to Izolyatsia, a former art center, transformed in 2014 into a now notorious prison synonymous with allegations of torture and inhumane treatment. “The moment you enter Izolyatsia, you are oppressed as a human and as a woman,” she said.

Although she was almost 60 years old at the time, Huseynova was made to undress in front of her interrogators. “They kept the handcuffs on me, on one hand. The bag was still over my head. I was sexually abused,” she told Arab News.

“They were laughing, and from the sound of their laughter I can tell they were rather young.”




Lyudmila Huseynova, who says she was kidnapped, interrogated and sexually assaulted by Russian troops. (AN photo/Mykhaylo Palinchak)

Huseynova, whose father is Muslim, was willing to waive her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual violence in order to draw attention to the alleged crimes committed by Russian-backed rebels in Donbas prior to the invasion.

“Women are respected in Islam,” she said. “The way we were treated by our captors goes against every Muslim law on the treatment of women.”

After this ordeal was over, Huseynova was taken to a cell, which she shared with another woman. It contained a bunk bed, a toilet, windows painted black to block out the sunlight, and a lamp that was on 24/7. There was a surveillance camera in every cell.

Huseynova said prisoners were made to stand every day from the early morning until sundown and were subjected to routine humiliation. On one occasion, Huseynova said she was forced to eat wheat containing mouse excrement, much to the joy of her captors.

Later Huseynova was transferred to SIZO prison in Lutsk, where she said she was deprived of sleep. “There were lots of addicts,” she said. “The TV was on at all hours of the day.”

It was while incarcerated in SIZO that Huseynova learned of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. “I lost all hope of ever being released,” she said.




Capt. Oleksandr Demchenko. (AN photo/Mykhaylo Palinchak)

However, in October that year Huseynova was suddenly released. Rounded up with a group of other detainees, with tape placed over their eyes, she was transported by car, first to a basement cell, and then to a military airport.

“The car drove around for 7 hours almost aimlessly. When they put us in the basement, they told us we would be executed. We were given no food, no water, just one scoop of wheat.”

However, rather than killing the prisoners, their captors loaded the women onto a plane, cramming them into their seats. Huseynova said the women were told menacingly “don’t be afraid, but this will hurt a little.”

The plane then landed in Crimea, where Huseynova could see a man standing with a white flag waiting to greet them.

Months after her release and resettlement in Kyiv, Huseynova said she cannot forget the women still imprisoned and has been searching for ways to help them. “They feel forgotten,” she said. “They must know they are not so.”

Like Huseynova, Demchenko is still suffering from several health complications brought on by his captivity. He has, however, regained the weight he lost and is looking much healthier.

“Life goes on,” he said, reflecting on the past year of war, imprisonment and freedom. “I never regretted being part of the mission. Speaking as a doctor, Russia is a cancer that must be removed without anesthesia.

“The captors knew what they were doing and, even worse, they enjoyed what they were doing. I will continue my service. I will not stop until we win.”

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has accused both Russia and Ukraine of torturing prisoners of war during the conflict. The International Criminal Court is investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine going back as far as 2013. Its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, believes there is a reasonable basis to believe war crimes have been carried out and, in December 2022, said “Ukraine is a crime scene.”


Two killed in shelling of Russian region on Ukraine border

Two killed in shelling of Russian region on Ukraine border
Updated 24 sec ago

Two killed in shelling of Russian region on Ukraine border

Two killed in shelling of Russian region on Ukraine border
MOSCOW: Ukrainian shelling killed two people on Saturday in Russia’s Belgorod, a border region that has been hit by repeated attacks this week, the local governor said.
Belgorod border villages have been hit by unprecedented shelling, and the latest deaths bring the overall toll to seven this week.
“Since this morning, the district of Shebekino has been under shelling of the Ukrainian armed forces,” said Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
He said an “elderly woman” was killed in the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka and another woman died from her wounds in the village of Bezlyudovka.
Two other people were wounded in the shelling.
The Shebekino area has been the hardest hit by the shelling, and residents from the area have been pouring in to displacement centers in the regional capital of Belgorod.
The Russian army on Thursday said it had used its air force and artillery to repel an attempt from the Ukrainian army to invade Belgorod.

Turkiye to send commando unit to help quell unrest in Kosovo

Turkiye to send commando unit to help quell unrest in Kosovo
Updated 17 min 15 sec ago

Turkiye to send commando unit to help quell unrest in Kosovo

Turkiye to send commando unit to help quell unrest in Kosovo
  • The request came from NATO’s Joint Force Command Naples, the ministry said
  • A defense ministry official said around 500 Turkish troops would be going to Kosovo

ANKARA: The Turkish defense ministry announced Saturday it will be sending a commando battalion to northern Kosovo in response to a NATO request for troops to help quell violent unrest.
The request came from NATO’s Joint Force Command Naples, the ministry said in a press statement posted on its official Twitter account, and the battalion will join the alliance’s peacekeeping mission in the region, known as KFOR, as a reserve unit.
A defense ministry official said around 500 Turkish troops would be going to Kosovo. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with ministry regulations.
NATO announced on Tuesday that it would be sending 700 troops to bolster the force in the area. KFOR currently consists of almost 3,800 troops, including some 350 from Turkiye.
Violent clashes with ethnic Serbs on Monday left 30 international soldiers — 11 Italians and 19 Hungarians — wounded, including fractures and burns from improvised explosive incendiary devices.
The clashes grew out of a confrontation that unfolded earlier after ethnic Albanian officials elected in votes overwhelmingly boycotted by Serbs entered municipal buildings to take office and were blocked by Serbs.
“We urge restraint and dialogue to resolve these developments in northern Kosovo which endanger regional security and stability,” the Turkish statement read. The Turkish commando battalion will be deploying to the Sultan Murat Barracks in Kosovo on Sunday and Monday.


Moscow ally Kyrgyzstan says ready to work with EU

Moscow ally Kyrgyzstan says ready to work with EU
Updated 42 min 23 sec ago

Moscow ally Kyrgyzstan says ready to work with EU

Moscow ally Kyrgyzstan says ready to work with EU
  • Moscow's invasion of Ukraine has prompted global powers such as China and the European Union to seek a greater role in Central Asia
  • "Kyrgyzstan is ready to work hand in hand with the European Union to resolve shared problems, encourage dialogue and find lasting solutions," said President Sadyr Japarov

CHOLPON-ATA, Kyrgyzstan: The president of Kyrgyzstan said on Saturday his ex-Soviet republic was ready to work with the EU, which hopes to tighten ties with a region Russia sees as its sphere of influence.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted global powers such as China and the European Union to seek a greater role in Central Asia.
This comes at a time when many in the region are questioning their long-standing ties with Russia and are seeking economic, diplomatic and strategic assurances elsewhere.
“Kyrgyzstan is ready to work hand in hand with the European Union to resolve shared problems, encourage dialogue and find lasting solutions,” said President Sadyr Japarov, whose country is an ally of Moscow.
He was speaking during a meeting with EU Council President Charles Michel.
Michel on Friday took part in a summit attended by the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The high-profile gathering in the resort of Cholpon-Ata on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul was the second summit between the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the EU, the top donor to the region and its main investment partner.
“We offer a sincere partnership” to the region’s five former Soviet republics, Michel told AFP in an interview Friday.
Japarov stressed the potential for solar and hydroelectric power in Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous country of six million inhabitants where Central Asia’s main rivers rise.
Japarov also defended the planned Kambarata-1 dam, a huge project on the Naryn river, which flows through both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
The dam and other hydroelectric projects have sparked tensions between states in Central Asia, where water shortages are increasingly frequent.
Russia remains the main power in the unstable and tightly controlled region, whose leaders have been criticized for helping Moscow circumvent Western sanctions over the war on Ukraine.
Neighbouring Afghanistan, under control of the Taliban, is also a source of instability.
Japarov and Michel issued a joint statement stressing their commitment to ensuring the Central Asian states remained independent.
On Friday, the Kyrgyz president openly called for the end to the war in Ukraine, another former Soviet republic.
It was a rare declaration from the leader of a country which refrains from publicly criticizing Moscow, on which it is still economically and military dependent.


Pope Francis to make historic visit to Mongolia in September

Pope Francis to make historic visit to Mongolia in September
Updated 03 June 2023

Pope Francis to make historic visit to Mongolia in September

Pope Francis to make historic visit to Mongolia in September
  • Pontiff will tour the vast nation from August 31 to September 4 at the invitation of the country’s president and church authorities

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis will go to Mongolia in early September in the first visit by a pontiff to the Buddhist-majority Asian nation, the Vatican announced Saturday.
The 86-year-old pontiff will tour the vast nation, sandwiched between Russia and China, from August 31 to September 4 at the invitation of the country’s president and church authorities, the head of the Vatican’s press service Matteo Bruni said.
The announcement of the trip comes just two months after Francis was hospitalized for three nights with bronchitis, after which he returned to his busy schedule.
Mongolia has one of the world’s smallest Catholic communities, estimated at just 1,500 people among the more than three million residents.
But Francis has long championed trips to smaller or more far-flung nations.
Last August, he made a cardinal Italian missionary Giorgio Marengo, who as apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar is the most senior Catholic official in Mongolia.
China will likely loom large over the visit, given its close economic ties with Mongolia.
Francis led a years-long effort to build ties with Communist Beijing and in 2018 the Holy See reached a two-year agreement on the thorny issue of the appointment of bishops.
The accord was renewed for two years in October, against a backdrop of tensions over the place of the country’s estimated 10 million or so Catholics.
“Mongolia is a peripheral state for China,” said Antoine Maire, a Mongolia specialist at France’s Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique.
But he said he did not see the country playing a mediating role between the Vatican and Beijing, saying it was balanced between its two giant neighbors.
“They are caught in a vice between Russia and China” Maire told AFP, suggesting with the pope’s visit Mongolia allows them to “diversify their external relations.”
Mongolia has struggled with political instability since its first democratic constitution in 1992, when it emerged from the Soviet orbit.
It has been the subject of growing interest in recent years from the United States as part of a strategy to thwart the rise of China.
The Vatican established formal diplomatic relations with Mongolia in 1992.
Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has conducted 41 overseas trips and visited around 60 different countries.
Despite an increasing number of health issues, notably a knee problem that has required him to use a wheelchair for the past year, he continues to travel.
Earlier this year he visited the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, and Hungary, and has trips planned later this year to Portugal and to Marseille.
He has talked about potentially going to India in 2024, while other Asian visits in the past have included trips to Kazakhstan, Japan and South Korea.


US, Canadian navies stage rare joint mission through Taiwan Strait

US, Canadian navies stage rare joint mission through Taiwan Strait
Updated 03 June 2023

US, Canadian navies stage rare joint mission through Taiwan Strait

US, Canadian navies stage rare joint mission through Taiwan Strait
  • While US warships transit the strait around once a month, it is unusual for them to do so with those of other US allies

TAIPEI: A US and a Canadian warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, the US Navy said, in a rare joint mission in the sensitive waterway at a time of heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington over Chinese-claimed Taiwan.
The US Navy’s 7th Fleet said the guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon and Canada’s HMCS Montreal conducted a “routine” transit of the strait “through waters where high-seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law.”
“Chung-Hoon and Montreal’s bilateral transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the commitment of the United States and our allies and partners to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” it said in a statement.
While US warships transit the strait around once a month, it is unusual for them to do so with those of other US allies.
The mission took place as the US and Chinese defense chiefs were attending a major regional security summit in Singapore.
At that event, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin rebuked China for refusing to hold military talks, leaving the superpowers deadlocked over Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
There was no immediate response to the sailing from China’s military, which routinely denounces them as a US effort to stir up tensions.
The last such publicly revealed US-Canadian mission in the narrow strait took place in September.
China has been ramping up military and political pressure in an attempt to force Taiwan to accept Beijing’s sovereignty claims, which the government in Taipei strongly rejects.