The Ukrainian marine endured nine months of physical and mental torture as a Russian prisoner of war, but was only given three months of rest and recovery before being ordered back to his unit.
The infantryman, who asked to be identified only by his call sign “Smiley,” voluntarily returned to duty. But it wasn’t until weeks later when he underwent intensive combat training that the depth and scope of his psychological and physical injuries began to become apparent.
“I started having flashbacks and nightmares,” he said. “I only slept two hours and woke up with my sleeping bag soaked through.” He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and referred to psychological care, which he is still receiving.
Former prisoners of war, officials and psychologists familiar with the cases say Ukraine is just beginning to understand the lasting effects of the trauma its prisoners suffered while in captivity in Russia, but it has failed to treat them properly and rehabilitated them too early. Return to work.
Nearly 3,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been released from Russia in prisoner exchanges since the invasion began in 2022. More than 10,000 people remain in Russian custody, some of whom have endured living conditions for two years that a United Nations expert described as horrific.
Critics say the Ukrainian government’s rehabilitation program, which typically requires two months in a nursing home and one month at home, is insufficient and that the trauma experienced by Ukrainian prisoners increases with the length and severity of their abuse. The war continues.
Russian torture of prisoners of war The United Nations has detailed recordsformer prisoners recounted relentless beatings, electric shocks, rapes, sexual violence and mock executions that an expert Describe it as a systematic, nationally sanctioned policy. Many detainees also reported lingering symptoms, such as fainting and fainting due to repeated blows to the head, severe enough to cause concussions.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said in September that “about 90 percent of Ukrainian prisoners of war have been subjected to torture, rape, threats of sexual violence or other forms of ill-treatment.”
The Russian military did not respond to a request for comment on allegations of mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Most of the released prisoners have returned to active duty after about three months of rest and recovery, as the Ukrainian military, which is short on frontline troops, grants relatively few medical exemptions to former prisoners.
A laws passed this month Former prisoners of war will be allowed the choice of returning to service or being discharged, acknowledging that many have suffered severe mental and physical torture and require long-term rehabilitation. Ukrainian officials acknowledged problems in providing adequate care for former prisoners but said they had now established special centers for them using international best practices.
Ukrainian prosecutors have identified 3,000 former military and civilian prisoners who could serve as witnesses in cases they are prosecuting in Ukrainian courts against Russian individuals and officials for abusing prisoners. Prosecutors encouraged two former inmates to speak to The New York Times.
One of them, 22-year-old Smiley, was captured early in the war when the Russian navy seized Ukrainian positions on Serpent Island in the Black Sea. Speaking a year after his release, he expressed hope that understanding conditions in Russian prisons would help not only his own recovery, but also the thousands of prisoners of war still incarcerated.
“My sister convinced me to do my first interview,” he said. “‘You need to tell,’ she said. Maybe if we talk, it will help with the treatment of our players.”
Another Ukrainian serviceman provided by prosecutors gave a lengthy interview but declined to give his name or call sign because of the shame attached to the abuse he suffered.
The 36-year-old soldier said he was captured along with thousands of soldiers and marines in May 2022 after a long siege at the Yazovstal steel plant in Mariupol. He was imprisoned in Russia for nine months before being released in a prisoner exchange at the beginning of the year. 2023.
He spent most of his time in three detention facilities in the Russian towns of Taganrog, Kamensk-Shakhkinsky and Kursk. When he returned, he was severely underweight, suffered a spinal injury, and, like many others, suffered from fainting, dizziness, and tinnitus from frequent hits to his head.
“I don’t faint anymore,” the soldier said, “but my back and concussion are making it difficult, and I’ve been getting squeezed in the area around my heart.” Despite his injuries, he spent two days resting in a nursing home. A few months later, he was ordered to return to duty as a guard.
“I didn’t know if I could run a kilometer,” he said.
He said prisoners suffered daily brutal beatings on their legs, backs and fingers, mental and physical torture during interrogations, as well as hunger, cold and lack of medical care. He said three men died in custody while he was incarcerated, including one in the communal cell they shared.
Two former prisoners said some Russian units where prisoners were guarded or interrogated were worse than others, but most detention facilities included beatings and torture every morning at roll call. Interrogations will last 40 minutes and typically include electric shocks, blows to the head and sexual abuse (either real or threatened).
“They started with maximum violence,” the soldier said. “They say ‘You’re lying, you’re not telling us everything.'” They put a knife to your ear or offer to chop off one of your fingers. “
Others would hit you in the back of the head so often that you lost consciousness, he said.
“If one guy got tired, the other guy would take over,” he recalled. “When you fall, they make you stand up again. It can last 30 to 40 minutes. Finally they say, ‘Why didn’t you tell us everything right away?'”
Smiley said much of the violence was sexual. He said one prison unit repeatedly shocked prisoners with batons all over their bodies, including their genitals. On another occasion, he said, an inmate was kicked multiple times in the genitals during roll call, with inmates lined up in a row with their legs spread facing the corridor wall. Smiley suffered an untreated permanent injury from a pelvic fracture from a baton beating and was unable to bend or lie down without help for two weeks.
He added that the ICRC had very limited access to the prisoner of war held in Russia and was not allowed to visit him during his nine-month imprisonment.
The second soldier said his interrogators beat him with a ruler, placed a knife on his body, threatened to castrate him, and that he was forced to strip naked and place his genitals on a stool.
Interrogators staged a mock execution on him, shooting him next to him while he was blindfolded. The soldier said they threatened to rape him and asked him to choose what they should use – a mop handle or a chair leg. “Do you want to do it yourself or do you want us to help you?” they laughed at him.
He said he was never actually penetrated, but others were raped. “You can’t walk normally after that,” he said. “You will suffer for weeks. Others are treated the same way.”
“I think they have this order to destroy us psychologically and physically so that we won’t want anything else in life,” he said, adding that suicides had occurred in Taganrog prison event.
“You could hear screaming all day long,” the soldier said. “Impossible screams.” Sometimes during quiet times, inmates could hear children playing outside, he said.
Back home, the former inmate’s ordeal wasn’t over.
“The hardest thing is there are so many people around,” the service member said. “Everyone is walking in the park quietly, but you still worry that someone is listening or that you might get pushed or say the wrong thing.”
Major Valeria Subotina, a military press officer and former journalist, was also captured at Azov and spent a year in a Russian women’s prison. She recently opened YOUkraine, a meeting space for former prisoners in Kiev.
“There are a lot of triggers and people don’t realize they still need care,” she said.
Three months after being released from prison in April 2023, she returned to work but found it difficult to sit in the office. “I can’t stand someone approaching me from behind or standing behind me,” she said.
Government psychologists are of little use, she said. “They often don’t know how to help us,” she said, and civilians often ask careless questions.
As a result, she said, many former prisoners find it easier to return to the front than to reintegrate into civilian life, and only fellow survivors truly understand what they are going through.
“We don’t want to feel pity,” she said, “because we’re proud of ourselves for surviving and overcoming this.”
