kyiv, Ukraine — The Ukrainian marine infantryman endured nine months of physical and psychological torture as a Russian prisoner of war, but received only three months of rest and rehabilitation before being returned to his unit.
The infantryman, who asked to be identified only by his call sign, Smiley, returned to duty willingly. But it wasn’t until he underwent intensive combat training in the weeks that followed that the depth and extent of his injuries, both psychological and physical, began to surface.
“I started having flashbacks and nightmares,” he said. “I only slept for two hours and woke up with my sleeping bag soaked.” He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and referred for psychological care. He is still undergoing treatment.
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Ukraine is only beginning to understand the lasting effects of the trauma suffered by its prisoners of war in Russian captivity, but it is not treating them properly and sending them back to work too soon, say former prisoners, officials and psychologists familiar with individual cases.
Nearly 3,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been released from Russia in prisoner swaps since the start of the 2022 invasion. More than 10,000 people remain detained in Russia, some of whom have endured two years of conditions which a United Nations expert described as horrific.
The Ukrainian government’s rehabilitation program, which typically includes two months in a sanatorium and one month at home, is inadequate, critics say, and the trauma suffered by Ukrainian prisoners increases with the duration and severity of the abuse they suffer. they are victims. the war drags on.
The torture of prisoners of war in Russia has been well documented by the United Nations, with former detainees speaking of incessant beatings, electric shocks, rape, sexual violence and mock executions, so much so that one expert described it as a systematic, state-sanctioned policy. . Many inmates also reported persistent symptoms such as fainting and fainting resulting from repeated blows to the head severe enough to cause concussions.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said in September that “about 90 percent of Ukrainian prisoners of war were 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 returned to active duty after about three months of rest and rehabilitation, because the Ukrainian military, short on troops on the front line, granted relatively few medical exemptions to former prisoners of war.
A law passed this month will allow former prisoners of war to choose between returning to service or being released from the military, recognizing that many of them have been subjected to severe mental and physical torture and are in need of a prolonged rehabilitation. Ukrainian officials acknowledged there were problems providing sufficient care for former prisoners, but said they had now developed special centers for them using international best practices.
Ukrainian prosecutors have identified 3,000 former military and civilian prisoners who can serve as witnesses in a case they are preparing for Ukrainian courts to accuse Russian individuals and officials of prisoner mistreatment. Prosecutors encouraged two of the former prisoners to speak to the New York Times.
One of them was 22-year-old Smiley, who was captured early in the war when the Russian navy seized Ukrainian positions on Snake Island in the Black Sea. He was speaking a year after his release, saying he hoped shedding light on conditions in Russian prisons would help not only his own rehabilitation, but also that of thousands of prisoners of war still in captivity.
“My sister persuaded me to give my first interview,” he said. “’You have to say it,’ she said. Maybe if we speak out it will improve the treatment of our guys.
A second Ukrainian serviceman made available by prosecutors gave a lengthy interview but refused to give his name or call sign, due to the stigma surrounding the abuse he suffered.
The serviceman, 36, said he was taken prisoner along with several thousand soldiers and marines after a long siege of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol in May 2022. He spent nine months in Russian captivity before to be released in an early prisoner exchange. 2023.
He spent most of his time in three detention centers located in the Russian cities of Taganrog, Kamensk-Shakhtinsky and Kursk. He returned critically underweight and suffered a spinal injury and, like many others, fainting spells, dizziness and ringing in the ears from frequent blows to the head.
“I don’t pass out anymore,” the soldier said, “but I have back problems and a concussion, as well as constant pressure around my heart.” Despite his injuries, he was ordered back to light duty as a guard after only two months of rest in a sanatorium.
“I don’t know if I could run a mile,” he said.
Prisoners were subjected to daily brutal beatings on the legs, backs and fingers, and mental and physical torture during interrogations, as well as hunger, cold and lack of medical care, he said. he declares. Three men died in custody during his incarceration, including one in the common cell they shared, he said.
Some of the Russian units that guarded or interrogated prisoners were worse than others, the two former prisoners said, but there were constant beatings every morning at roll call and torture in most detention centers. detention. The interrogations lasted 40 minutes and often consisted of electric shocks, blows to the head, and actual or threatened sexual abuse.
“They start 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 cut off your finger.
Others hit them on the back of the head so regularly that they lost consciousness, he said.
“If one gets tired, another takes over,” he remembers. “When you fall, they make you get up again. This may last 30 to 40 minutes. At the end they say: “Why didn’t you tell us everything immediately? »
Smiley said much of the violence was sexual in nature. A prison unit repeatedly beat prisoners all over their bodies, including their genitals, with batons which gave them electric shocks, he said. On another occasion, he said, a cellmate was repeatedly kicked in the genitals during roll call, where prisoners were lined up with their legs apart facing a wall in a corridor. Smiley suffered a permanent injury from an untreated pelvic fracture following a baton blow and was unable to bend or lie down without assistance for two weeks.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has very limited access to prisoners of war held in Russia, was not allowed to visit him during his nine months of imprisonment, he added.
The second soldier said he was forced to undress and place his genitals on a stool while his interrogators beat them with a ruler and held a knife to them, threatening to castrate him.
Interrogators subjected him to a mock execution, firing a volley of shots next to him while he was blindfolded. They threatened him with rape, the soldier said, making him choose what they should use: a mop handle or the leg of a chair. “Do you want to do it yourself or do you want us to help you?” » they taunted him.
He said he was never actually penetrated, but that others were raped. “After that, you can’t walk normally,” he said. “You suffer for weeks. Other guys got the same treatment.
“I think they were ordered to break us psychologically and physically so that we wouldn’t want anything else in life,” he said, adding that there had been suicides in the Taganrog prison.
“You could hear the screams all day,” the soldier said. “Impossible screams.” Sometimes, during a lull, prisoners could hear the voices of children playing outside, he said.
The ordeal of former prisoners is by no means over once they return home.
“The hardest thing is having too many people,” the soldier said. “Everyone walks peacefully in the park and you are always afraid that someone will listen to you, that you will be pushed or that you will say something wrong.”
Major Valeria Subotina, a military press officer and former journalist who was also taken prisoner in Azovstal and who spent a year in women’s prisons in Russia, recently opened a meeting space in kyiv called YOUkraine, for former prisoners.
“There are many triggers and people don’t realize they still need care,” she said.
She returned to service three months after her release in April 2023, but found it difficult to sit in an office. “I can’t stand having someone approach me from behind or stand behind me,” she said.
Government psychologists aren’t much help, she says. “They often don’t know how to help us,” she said, and civilians often ask careless questions.
As a result, many former prisoners find it easier to return to the front lines than to rejoin civilian life, she explained, and only other survivors truly understand what they are going through.
“We don’t want to have pity,” she said, “because we are proud that we survived and overcame this situation. »
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