“It was painful to know how many people, how much time and how much effort it took to free me from Russian captivity,” said Yury Gulchuk.
The 22-year-old soldier was a prisoner of war for more than two years.
He spent 30 months, between April 2022 and September 2024, being transferred from one Russian prison to another and often suffering beatings and ill-treatment.
For almost a year of captivity he did not speak: it served as psychological and physical protection, he said.
He remained silent even after returning home. A video of his mother, Milana, hugging his thin body and caressing his face circulated on the Internet.
“We love you, we love you,” Milana repeated to make him talk.
He later explained that he was unable to communicate at the time.
The first thing his mother heard him say was: “Why are people so cruel to others? Why is there so much pain?”
historic day
Yury had enlisted to serve in the Navy just two weeks before the full-scale Russian invasion began on February 24, 2022. He was in Mariupol that day.
“We woke up and heard a loud noise. The ground floor windows were broken. “We thought it was due to an explosion on the near front.”
A few hours later, It became clear that full-scale war had begun.
“The history books will write that it all started in Mariupol that day, I thought. And I was in Mariupol, there and then,” Yury said. “But I had no idea what the future held.”
Almost two months later he was captured by the Russian army.
“Clearly sadistic”
“The treatment we received depended on who was on duty in the prison,” Yury recalls.
“There were some guards who beat all the prisoners. Others asked who was over 50, sick or injured, and they forgave them. But some of the guards were clearly sadistic.”
In October, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned of the “widespread and systematic” torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian forces.
His statement was based on documented accounts from 174 Ukrainian prisoners of war, almost all of whom described ongoing experiences of torture during captivity.
Prisoners were subjected to electric shocks, beatings, sexual assaults, sleep deprivation and threats of further violence.
In August, Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, stated that 95% of Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russia had suffered torture.
On October 29, a report from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was presented to the UN General Assembly stating that Russian authorities had committed torture as a crime against humanity.
In October, Ukrainian prosecutors launched an investigation into what they described as the “largest mass execution” of Ukrainian prisoners by Russian troops since the start of the large-scale invasion of Moscow, alleging that 16 men were lined up and shot dead in a forest.
Russia has not commented on any of the UN reports or allegations of torture or murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war by its forces.
In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that there were 6,465 captive Ukrainian soldiers.
However, the Human Rights Media Initiative, a Ukrainian NGO, estimated that Russian forces could be holding more than 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers prisoner.
Ukraine claims to have freed at least 3,650 of its citizens, both military and civilian, from captivity.
psychological game
Yury Gulchuk lost more than 20 kilos during his captivity, but remained determined to be free one day.
He dreamed about his parents, about his childhood and made plans for the future. Most of the time he remained silent.
“I fell into silence little by little. It’s not that one day I decided to stop talking… I was silent because it was necessary.”
When he was taken to be exchanged with Russian prisoners, he at first did not believe that he would soon be released.
He said he thought it was another “psychological game” by Russian soldiers, when they said they were taking a prisoner to an exchange, but in reality they were just transferring him to another prison. There prisoners often received even more beatings.
Therefore, on the day of their exchange, Yury was not preparing for the joy of seeing his parents after two years, but for the beatings, humiliation and pain.
He and other Ukrainian prisoners were taken through Belarus, Russia’s neighboring country, also bordering Ukraine. They were allowed to remove the blankets from their heads and were given dry rations with chocolate, crackers and sweets.
“It seemed surreal,” Yury recalls.
He kept thinking that it was a joke and only when he saw his mother and other family members waiting for him and smiling, did he begin to believe that it was real.
Adapt to life
At first, after meeting his family, he couldn’t speak.
“It wasn’t just about getting the vocal cords working. To start talking, singing or shouting, I needed to work a mental muscle that had become weak. “We had to bring him back to life.”
It took a few days for Yury to believe that he was back home and safe.
He says he wants to watch all the blockbuster movies released during his captivity, catch up on the latest music and ride an electric scooter.
He is also considering resuming his Chinese studies at Kyiv State University, which he interrupted shortly before the war to enlist in the army.
“I tell myself that the time I spent in captivity was not entirely a waste,” he says. “Maybe it’s just self-consolation, but I want to say that I gained something from this experience.”
“I was lucky to survive. “Not everyone was so lucky.”
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