Ukrainian Medic’s Months in Russian Cell: Cold, Dirty and Used as a Prop

KYIV, Ukraine — In the course of the siege of Mariupol, in southern Ukraine, Russians pounded the town with artillery and blocked civilian escape routes, creating one of many worst humanitarian crises of the struggle. As Ukrainian troopers holed up within the Azovstal metal plant, the medic Yulia Paievska took on the harmful work of evacuating households from a metropolis below fixed assault.

Ms. Paievska, 53, was already well-known in Ukraine as Taira, a nickname she first used within the online game World of Warcraft. Her all-female volunteer medic group, known as Taira’s Angels, had turn into well-known in Ukraine in the course of the earlier struggle within the japanese Donbas area.

So when Russian troopers captured her on March 16 as she was evacuating a bunch from Mariupol, they knew precisely who she was. Held for 3 months, unable to speak together with her husband and daughter, she grew to become a logo of Ukrainian bravery and self-sacrifice.

In an interview with The New York Occasions, performed by video from the Kyiv hospital room the place she has been recovering since her launch round three weeks in the past in a prisoner trade, she accused her captors of torture, together with relentless beatings.

“All three months I spent in a cell, within the basement — solely a small piece of sky and thistles within the window,” she mentioned.

She shortly discovered that Russian therapy can be harsh. After being captured together with her driver, she was taken to a jail in Russian-occupied Donetsk, the place she requested to make a telephone name. “You may have watched too many American movies,” she was advised. “There will probably be no calls.”

She was thrown right into a freezing cell and repeatedly questioned for hours. Over the primary 5 days, she mentioned, she was given no meals and about half a glass of water a day.

“They tried to squeeze proof out of me,” she mentioned, satisfied she had secret details about an assault on Russia. “They needed me to confess that I used to be a Nazi, that I did some nasty issues, killed somebody. I didn’t incriminate myself. It value me dearly.”

The Russians dragged her in entrance of cameras for a propaganda video, launched 10 days after her arrest, during which she was in comparison with Hitler and accused of utilizing youngsters as shields.

However Ms. Paievska had shot her personal movies earlier than her seize, utilizing a head-mounted digital camera. The day earlier than she was detained, she hid a reminiscence card in a tampon and gave it to 2 Related Press journalists leaving Mariupol. A month after the discharge of the Russian video, The A.P. printed her footage.

It exhibits what she noticed as she handled youngsters and troopers. In a single clip, shot two days after Russia invaded in late February, she ordered colleagues to wrap a blanket round a freezing Russian soldier.

“We deal with everybody equally,” she advised the soldier, who expressed shock.

The kindness was not returned.

Ms. Paievska was thrown into solitary confinement and for a month disadvantaged of her thyroid medicine and bronchial asthma inhaler. She was finally put right into a 10-by-20-foot cell with 21 different girls. Two or three shared every bunk, making sleep troublesome.

Ms. Paievska was an aikido coach and designed books and ceramics earlier than Ukraine’s Maidan revolution, the protests that led to the ouster in 2014 of a pro-Russian president. As hundreds camped out in Kyiv’s central sq. for months, she retrained as a medic to take care of injured protesters.

When Russian-backed separatists began a struggle that 12 months within the Donbas, she volunteered on the entrance. She joined the army in 2018, heading the evacuation division in a cellular hospital in Mariupol, however left army service in 2020 and resumed her volunteer work. She estimates she educated greater than 8,000 folks in tactical drugs.

Throughout her detention, Ms. Paievska mentioned, little was provided in the best way of provides. She had one pair of underwear and one sturdy pair of Levi’s. She was saved from the cell’s bitter chilly as a result of she had a fur coat on when she was captured.

“They didn’t give us towels or something,” she mentioned. “No toothpaste, no toothbrush, nothing.” She mentioned she was allowed to bathe solely as soon as in three months and by no means bought to depart the constructing to stroll within the yard.

Most of the girls detained together with her had psychological issues, she mentioned.

Within the jail, officers hung portraits of Stalin and two chiefs of his secret police, Genrikh Yagoda and Lavrenti P. Beria. In Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, the reputations of the boys, who performed main roles in purges of Stalin’s opponents, are being rehabilitated.

The detainees had been made to sing and chant pro-Russian songs and slogans.

“In fact, they compelled us to sing the Russian anthem,” she mentioned, including, “I discovered it. ‘Glory to Putin! Glory to Russia!’ All these silly chants.”

Ms. Paievska’s therapy tracks with the torture and poor care that the United Nations has documented in prisons within the Donetsk area since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists took management there.

In a report issued final summer season, the United Nations mentioned 4,300 to 4,700 detainees had been “systematically” tortured and mistreated.

Since Feb. 24, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the nation, “it could be pretty protected to imagine situations have additional deteriorated,” mentioned Matilda Bogner, the pinnacle of the U.N.’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

Ms. Paievska mentioned she relied on her martial arts apply and her background in psychology to manage.

“I understood what methods they utilized to me,” she mentioned, “and what I wanted to do to not break, to not bend.”

After three months in custody, she mentioned, at some point a guard opened the cell door. He advised her to show her again.

“They put a bag over my head,” she mentioned, led her rigorously out to a automotive, then “took the bag off my head and took me away from Donetsk with out saying something.”

She didn’t know if she can be exchanged or shot. A lady who was launched later advised her that detainees had been advised that she had been killed.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine introduced her launch on June 17 in his nightly tackle. “We’ll preserve working to liberate everybody,” Mr. Zelensky promised.

The variety of Ukrainians nonetheless in Russian custody isn’t clear. Late final month — the day after a switch of 144 Ukrainian troopers, the biggest prisoner swap since February — a press officer for the Russian Ministry of Protection mentioned it held 6,000 Ukrainian prisoners of struggle, a quantity that would not be verified independently.

In captivity, Ms. Paievska mentioned, she heard solely propaganda concerning the state of affairs in Ukraine.

“Now I’m soaking the whole lot up like a sponge,” she mentioned, although a lot of the information is painful — so many mates misplaced, so many wounded.

And she or he is contending with the toll of the Mariupol siege and her captivity.

“After I was launched, I used to be bodily exhausted to the acute,” she mentioned. “I’ve penalties from this, and I in all probability will for the remainder of my life.”

She misplaced greater than 20 kilos and has bother sleeping. Her detention has left her with psychological signs, too, she mentioned.

“I already had shell shock in Mariupol, after which I needed to endure a lot, so my reminiscence isn’t superb,” she mentioned. “However I bear in mind what I’ve to.”

Reminiscences of horrors witnessed could be onerous to shake.

Footage Ms. Paievska smuggled out of Mariupol exhibits her caring for 2 youngsters whose dad and mom had been killed throughout combating at a checkpoint. The boy was damage, too, and within the video she begs him, “Stick with me, baby.” Moments later, he dies. Her digital camera captures her turning away, crying.

“I hate this,” she says as she closes his eyes.

Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting.