Several former Ukrainian prisoners in Russian hands said Wednesday of “inhumane” and “horrible conditions of detention”, a few days following being released in an exchange with Russia.
Viktoria Obidina, Tetiana Vassyltchenko, Inga Tchikinda and Lioudmyla Gousseïnova have in common these hours, these days, these weeks or even these months spent as prisoners of the Russian army, without knowing precisely where they were.
We were packed in cells like sardines
According to Ms. Obidina, a 26-year-old Nursing Sister who spent five months in captivity, the conditions of detention were “horrible”, with food “disgusting”.
With her four-year-old daughter, the young woman stayed for weeks in the underground galleries of the giant Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol (south), which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
Mrs. Obidina says that in May, she managed to entrust her daughter to an evacuee before being taken into custody by the Russians. According to her testimony regarding her captivity, the prisoners of which she was a part were only allowed to go out for walks “very rarely”. “We were crammed into cells like sardines”she says once more during a press conference organized in kyiv.
They treated us like criminals, humiliated us
Tetiana Vassyltchenko, a civilian who helped the Ukrainian army in the paramedical field, spoke of the “psychological pressure” and the conditions “inhuman” in which she lived for weeks: “They treated us like criminals, humiliated us”she recalls, also deploring the almost total absence of medical aid.
The four women also mention the lack of access to the Ukrainian media, while, according to them, their Russian jailers kept telling them: “Ukraine does not want you”.
However, it is difficult for these ex-prisoners, released among one hundred and eight women exchanged in mid-October, to put into words all that they have experienced. The memories are still too fresh, too vivid.
I lost eight pounds
“Too little time has passed following the release”, Lioudmyla Gousseïnova justifies herself, before Inga Tchikinda, born in Lithuania but living in Ukraine for 25 years, adds: “I can’t say anything good.” “I lost eight kilos” in detention, she says, also denouncing the malnutrition of Ukrainian prisoners.
All of them, however, remember their liberation very well, “tears of joy” et “absolute happiness” when they know they are in territory controlled by kyiv.
After eight months of war, several of which have been spent in prison, their desires are different, between those who want to help the soldiers at the front once more, and those who, like Inga Tchikinda, are too scarred to take the risk of being detained once more. “I will not survive such a thing a second time”, she says.
