Summary:
- Viktoria Andrusha undertook a daring act of resistance during the early stages of the Russian occupation of Staryi Bykiv, a Ukrainian village fifty miles east of Kyiv, and narrates her story of the painful return.
- A Ukrainian couple from a different village detained by Russian soldiers was released in a prisoner exchange in the middle of April.
- Oleksiy Dibrovskyi was taken to Kursk after being arrested in his hometown in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia; he was later released in a trade.
- In the end, the Red Cross could provide the Ukrainian government with confirmation that Viktoria Andrusha was a prisoner being held in Kursk.
- The Russian government still denied it.
Viktoria Andrusha undertook a daring act of resistance during the early stages of the Russian occupation of Staryi Bykiv, a Ukrainian village fifty miles east of Kyiv, and narrates her story of the painful return. She observed the Russian armored vehicles and weaponry rumbling down the town’s main road and shared her observations with friends who had connections to the Ukrainian military.
The first day
The first day of the war saw Andrusha, a twenty-five-year-old math teacher, return to her hometown of Brovary, a small town across the Dnipro River from the capital. She watched the living room window and occasionally scaled the roof to get a better look at Russian military hardware. Mykola, her talkative father who had a soft heart and had served in the Soviet Army, would explain the distinctions between anti-aircraft launchers and long-range artillery systems. Additionally, he advised Viktoria to get in the family vehicle and travel in safely. She declined. Regarding the invading force, Viktoria remarked, “We greeted them.” We’ll follow them out.
One month into the occupation of Staryi Bykiv, on March 25, Russian soldiers searched the family’s street house by house. It appeared as though they were looking for someone specific. The Andrushas’ residence, a one-story, white-brick building with a metal roof, a rose bush, and an apple tree in front was approached by an armored personnel carrier. Twelve soldiers spilled out and begged to be allowed inside. Viktoria’s phone was demanded to be shown to a Russian F.S.B. agent. He pronounced, “That’s her,” and demanded that Viktoria be taken into custody. Another soldier instructed her to dress warmly. “That place will be chilly.”
Kateryna, Viktoria’s mother, was able to give her daughter a kiss on the cheek and a pair of warm socks. Another group of soldiers kept watching over Mykola as he stood outside. Viktoria requested to say goodbye to her father before being led out. After their embrace, she abruptly left.
Boiler room detention
A twenty-one-year-old auto mechanic named Maxim Didyk led me to a boiler room behind the village’s Soviet-era cultural center, where Russian soldiers had imprisoned him and about twenty other people. At one point, six people, including Didyk, lived inside in a crawl space the size of a small closet. A commander had entered the boiler room the day before Russian forces with the grim announcement that he needed four corpses. Who would willingly submit to being shot? Three of those men’s remains were later discovered in the nearby cemetery. (I blogged about the situation in April.)
Didyk revealed that Viktoria Andrusha, his village friend, had also been imprisoned in the boiler room. She slyly brought water to those in the cellar, and one night she helped a fellow prisoner remove a bullet from his arm by sterilizing a knife over a lighter flame. Didyk talked about facing her captors, the Russians, with grace and quiet defiance. He said, “She said, I’m Ukrainian, a patriot. I won’t speak Russian with you. She was proud instead of afraid. A group of soldiers had arrived and taken Viktoria away a few days before the Russian Army’s retreat from the village.
I kept up with what little Viktoria-related news there was in the ensuing weeks and months. She’s in Russia, we’re told,” Mykola said. However, we don’t know where she is or her condition. A Ukrainian couple from a different village detained by Russian soldiers was released in a prisoner exchange in the middle of April. The couple had been kept in southwestern Russia’s Kursk detention facility. The man claimed that his wife had shared cell numbers 5-13 with Viktoria during their time there in an interview with Ukrainian journalists.
True “zone”
Oleksiy Dibrovskyi was taken to Kursk after being arrested in his hometown in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia; he was later released in a trade. The conditions in Kursk, he claimed, were comparable to those of a true “zone” (slang for “prison camp”). Everything: the hallways, the dogs, the guards—it’s a very challenging environment psychologically. His captors informed him when he arrived that he would be sentenced to a minimum of three to five years in prison. He echoed the guards’ threats, “Even if you didn’t do anything, being here means you’re already screwed. We consider you all to be criminals.
Russian activists and lawyers collaborated with Ukrainian human rights defenders to help them visit prisoners held inside Russia. A letter from Viktoria’s family appointing him as their legal representative was presented to Leonid Krikun, a St. Petersburg attorney, in May when he arrived at the Kursk prison. Given that Kursk was ostensibly a facility for the detention of civilians, he found it strange that Russian military police trucks were parked outside. Guards made him wait for two hours before granting him access to see his client. The warden finally appeared and informed him, “We have no such person.” During a subsequent visit in July, he received the same response. Krikun said to me, “We lodged complaints. “But it’s difficult to defend a person’s rights if the state doesn’t even acknowledge they are being held,” the author says.
Moral policing
An F.S.B. officer entered the yard. He declared Mykola to be an inadequate father. He said she made poor decisions because of how you raised her. Not pitying Russia, Mykola was nonetheless pleased with his daughter’s bravery. However, he was tormented by her detention. He admitted, “I really am a bad father, I thought. “I couldn’t shield my daughter from harm and hide her from danger.”
A week later, on April 6, I made it to Staryi Bykiv. As the Russian Army had evacuated the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, Staryi Bykiv was also no longer under their control. The town, which had once been a picture of traditional Ukrainian single-story homes with gardens in the back and grazing cows in wide-open spaces, was in disarray. Russian military vehicles that had been destroyed lined the streets, and residents were returning to their homes occupied by Russian soldiers, which were now defaced with graffiti and garbage.
Russian denial
Nataliia Yashchuk, a coordinator at the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian non-governmental organization that shared the Nobel Peace Prize this year with human rights defenders in Belarus and Russia, claimed that her group was the only one tracking approximately 650 cases of Ukrainians who had been arrested or vanished. She believes that the actual figure is significantly higher. In the end, the Red Cross could provide the Ukrainian government with confirmation that Viktoria Andrusha was a prisoner being held in Kursk. The Russian government still denied it. The failure to acknowledge a civilian’s detention or to disclose their whereabouts in custody may be prosecutable as a crime against humanity under the International Criminal Court’s statute, according to Human Rights Watch’s report on Viktoria’s case from June.
Communication at last
Viktoria’s parents received a handwritten letter in August. Viktoria wrote, “I’m fine, I’m still alive, but I’m being imprisoned. She claimed to receive three meals per day as well as medical attention. She wrote, “Please pardon me for getting myself into this mess. Although they were familiar with the writing, her family didn’t think Viktoria sounded like herself. Iryna, her older sister, told me that she either had this dictated to her or wrote it while hiding under a gun barrel.
Some respite for the family
A few days later, on September 29, while Mykola was attempting to fix his tractor and Kateryna was peeling beets in the yard with Viktoria’s parents, Kateryna’s phone rang. Vicky was there. In Ukraine, she was. “They brought back Vika!” yelled Kateryna. If she was still alive or if they had brought back her body, Mykola questioned. Kateryna responded, “Alive.” Viktoria had been set free in a prisoner exchange earlier in the day without prior notice or warning. To get to a military hospital, she rides a bus. She returned home after four days.
Dressed in a blue V-neck sweater and she had her brown hair pulled back when I went back to Staryi Bykiv to meet Viktoria. She recalled what had transpired since she was taken out of the boiler room in what appeared to be a cheerful, even bubbly, mood. She was transported in a car for several hours while wearing a blindfold by Russian soldiers before being placed in a helicopter. Viktoria said, “Entering the total unknown was scarier than it was.” She spent a few days in a tent camp in the Russian town of Glushkovo, which is close to the border. There, she was given an identification card stating that she was now a prisoner of war. Although she was never formally indicted, a Russian official informed her that she was accused of spying.
Tales of torture
After ten days, she was taken to the Kursk prison. She was taken to a questioning area where Russian guards beat her with clubs, and fists and, at one point, electrocuted her. She discovered that “priyomka,” or “intake,” as the guards called it, was standard procedure for new inmates.
Russian criminal prisoners were housed in one camp, and Ukrainian criminal prisoners in the other. With one other woman, Viktoria shared a cell. They had to sing the Russian anthem while standing at six in the morning. Viktoria remarked, “You had to start over if you got a word wrong. “They ridiculed me, saying, “You’re a teacher. Now it’s up to you to succeed on the test. Once a week, prisoners were allowed to take a bath, which required a short walk to the shower stalls in a different cell block. This was the only time Viktoria got to see the sky.
Interrogation and lies
Are you a spotter for the Ukrainian military? Her captors repeatedly asked this question as they subjected Viktoria to routine interrogations. Have you got access to any sensitive information? You seem well-prepared; did the secret Service hire you? Viktoria recalled repeatedly telling them that she had nothing new to add. I’m just a regular teacher, that’s all.
According to her interrogators, the Russian Army was on the verge of capturing Kyiv, who also claimed that Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, had fled the city and that residents of the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions were in the process of acquiring Russian citizenship. Russian state news programs showing contented individuals in recently occupied areas of Ukraine were made mandatory viewing for prisoners. Can it be true? I wondered as I watched that. Added Viktoria. Then, I told myself not to believe it and that I still remembered the nation I had left.
Psychological torture
The guards initially assured her that although they would not physically harm her because she was a woman, they could still exert psychological pressure on her because “no one forbids us from doing so.” They would tell us that nobody needed us, that Ukraine was gone, that we were forgotten, and that no one was coming to get us, Viktoria said. The good news is that everything is fine at home, a sympathetic investigator whispered one day in July. According to him, the Russians have left Staryi Bykiv.
At that point, Viktoria and her cellmates disregarded the guards’ mistreatment. We simply stopped responding, she said, at most making it into a joke and laughing about it. We would ask, “What’s wrong?” as they screamed. How come you’re crying? They were unable to grasp. While everyone else is afraid, we tell you to do whatever you want. If you want to scream, do so. “When we laughed, it drove them crazy,” Viktoria continued. Guards once attempted to force the female inmates of Viktoria’s cell to march while yelling “Glory to Russia” and cursing Zelensky. As a result of their refusal, the guards abandoned them.
Letter allowance
She wrote a letter to her family, so I inquired about it. One day, she and the other female prisoners were brought into a room with pens and paper. “I guess I was feeling good that day,” she remarked. “I was making an effort to avoid getting depressed. How long would I sit here for? Okay, she reasoned, I’ll write down what the guards are asking. I realized that they required this letter more than I did.
The days essentially had a plodding sameness, though every now and then, a new woman would appear in the cell, such as an army medic who had been one of the last Ukrainians to defend Mariupol. The female group narrated the stories of their favorite books to one another. Daniel Keyes’ works were read aloud by Viktoria, including “Flowers for Algernon,” a novel about a man who has experimental neurosurgery, and “The Minds of Billy Milligan,” a nonfiction account of the first American to be acquitted of a serious crime due to dissociative identity disorder. They took turns acting as though they had woken up in an unfamiliar, empty room and had to decide what to do next in Viktoria’s idea of a role-playing game. Viktoria informed me, “You could say it was inspired by real life. “Here we are, taken from our families and taken where we don’t know.”
Birthday celebration in captivity
Viktoria celebrated her 26th birthday on September 15, five months after being imprisoned. Her fellow prisoners topped off their teacups with water and wished her a speedy return home. None of them, however, had much hope left. She said for the first few months, “We constantly expected someone to knock on the door and open it for us, but eventually, we stopped.” We made that part of our brains inactive.
Viktoria and her cellmates were instructed to gather their belongings by guards who arrived at their cell five days later. They were taken to another female prison, where they were housed for a few days. Viktoria became optimistic about an exchange when she learned they were in Bryansk, a Russian region close to the Belarusian border. We won’t be here for long; I told the other girls, she recalled. Ultimately, on September 29, Viktoria and five additional Ukrainian prisoners were once more placed inside a van. After passing through Belarus, they were split into two jeeps, one for the men and one for the women. The Russian guards ordered them to exit after driving a little further.
Beginning of the painful return process
A sign in Ukrainian caught Viktoria’s eye as she was strolling alongside the street. We’re safe; she said as she turned to face Ivan, a military sniper who was a fellow prisoner. Our house is ours. She gave him a bear hug because he appeared shaken and about to cry. In front of them was a soldier from Ukraine. Welcome back to your home country, he greeted. The prisoners were given mobile phones and some food by a different Ukrainian officer.
Viktoria returned to Staryi Bykiv after spending a few days in a military hospital being treated by medical professionals and receiving a debriefing from S.B.U. (Ukraine’s security service) investigators. Her parents inflated balloons. Locals stopped by. Mykola grilled a shashlik kebab. He admitted to me that he hadn’t broached the subject of his daughter’s time spent in captivity with her. He said, “I don’t want to annoy her. She’s had enough of that, I said.
Returning to normalcy but with a permanent scar left.
But upon her return, she was forced to face shocking new information regarding the occupation of Staryi Bykiv. For instance, one of the victims of their Russian captors’ gunfire was the man from whose arm she had removed a bullet. When I was in jail, we were all told that Russians are very understanding and kind, that they came to Ukraine to save people, Viktoria said. She no longer has any remaining faith in them after returning home because “the belief that there is anything human left in them has died completely.”
Viktoria appreciates the simplicity of life in Staryi Bykiv more than ever these days. She enjoys going for walks in the fresh air and conversing with her parents. She said, “I’ve realized that happiness, joy, and love are contained in the smallest things. Despite knowing she would end up in prison, she doesn’t regret her choices and would act the same way again. Everybody follows their own course in life, she said. “I try to follow my own path.”
The findings are part of Advocacy Unified Network’s Operation For Ukrainian Refugees project, which started on April 21, 2022
