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Not only Ukrainian military personnel are taken into captivity by the Russian forces.  Prisoners include private citizens and, the subjects of this story, paramedics like Yulia Paevska and Volodymyr Tatarenko.

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Volodymyr Tatarenko was born in Mariupol and had an advertising business in the city with his father. When Russia attacked the Donbas in 2014 he became an active member of a voluntary medical organisation known as Tayra’s Angels after its leader the legendary paramedic Yulia Paevska whose call sign was Tayra.  Volodymyr helped evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield to a first aid station. We will return to his story later.

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Who was Tayra?

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Yulia Paevska was born in 1968 and brought up in Kyiv by her grandfather, a veteran of the Siege of Leningrad.  A ceramicist and designer by profession her first medical experience came from awareness of sports injuries through her interest in aikido.  She was a proficient aikido fighter and coach, president of the Ukrainian Aikido Federation.

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In 2013 she was a volunteer paramedic during the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv and when war broke out in the Donbas in 2014 she volunteered as a paramedic, adopting the call sign “Tayra”.  She trained about 8000 volunteer paramedics in tactical medicine and liaised between civilians and the army in frontline areas without medical coverage.  Soon she had set up the ambulance service for military and civilian victims of the war that became known as “Tayra’s Angels”.  It was a voluntary organisation, mainly funded by small donations from individuals, but, as she told Ukrainska Pravda in 2018 “I don't like the word "volunteer". It has a touch of unprofessionalism. In four years, we are already such pros ... We are volunteers – those who consciously and sincerely do what they do”.  They saved some 500 lives.

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When the full scale invasion began in 2022 she spent the first three weeks working in the Mariupol hospital helping to triage the wounded as they arrived.  There were a large number of women and infants living in the hospital basement because the hospital had an electricity generator and a reliable water supply.  These women were desperate to get out of Mariupol into  Zaporizhzhia, which was in Ukrainian territory, and there were rumours that others had managed to get out through the so-called safe corridor.  Tayra knew that there was a bus they could use and decided to take the risk of driving the women and their babies out.  She thought that no one would harm women and children.

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On 15 March, the day before they started the journey, Tayra gave Associated Press journalists her photographs and films of the siege of Mariupol in the first three weeks of the full scale invasion.  This was material captured by her body camera as she and the Angels worked in the city and it was to make the world aware of the horror of what had happened to Mariupol.

On 16 March as they drove the bus out of Mariupol Tayra and the bus driver were detained by Russian soldiers and taken into captivity.  The women and children were released.

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This was the beginning of three months imprisonment.

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Interviewed by Deutsche Welle journalist  Tamara Kiptenko shortly after her release she was asked how she had withstood the physical and mental hardships of Russian captivity. 

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As regards physical hardships she seems stoical, describing only her first prison was in Donetsk where she was held with women from the National Guard, Azov and other military units as well as civilians.  Twenty two women were held in a cell measuring  3M by 6M and shared 10 bunks.  They were not allowed to sit during the day.  One of the women in that cell was 7 months pregnant.

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Food was scarce (“just enough to keep us alive”) and in the second week they had no soap.  All the time in captivity she had only the clothes she was wearing when they arrested her.  She was refused medical attention and also phone calls. She also says, more graphically, of her early period in captivity “the days merged into each other – no sleep, no food, almost no water…”.

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She told the journalist that physically she was strong before captivity, thanks not only to years of martial arts and yoga but also to her more recent training for the Invictus Games.  She had been invited to take part in the Invictus Games in May 2022.  Captivity prevented that but her daughter took her place, the ensuing publicity ensuring that the world knew what had happened to her.

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Psychologically she was also resilient: “I did not collapse, I kept my dignity, I knew I had done nothing wrong”, but the pressure was unrelenting.  Some of her early cellmates in Donetsk were less resilient, suffering terribly from not knowing what had happened to their families.

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Her own situation was different.  They were looking for Ukrainian agents in Mariupol (“on the territory of the Donetsk Peoples Republic”) and she was told to expect a death sentence as a collaborator with a foreign power (Ukraine), saying things like  “You will die so you might as well kill yourself”.  As she comments “that would have been very convenient for them”. 

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Her captors knew about the video material she had released to the world press.  They assailed her with a flood of lies and misinformation, not just about herself but also about the war situation but she was steadfast in her belief that “you can’t believe the enemy – they either distort facts or tell straightforward lies”.  Plus the tiny amount of information on the current situation she was able to find out (the lack of Russian progress in the war, their retreat from Kyiv) reinforced her faith in Ukraine.

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The Russians made a propaganda documentary about her.  She did not trust the charming TV crew and knew she had to be very careful what she said to camera, so that it would be difficult for them to distort the truth by cutting up the tapes – although in the end they managed to twist it for their own purposes and created an “absurdity”, depicting her as a “Nazi”, a “murderer” and a sort of spy.

Her message to other prisoners is that they must not believe anything the Russians tell them, especially when they say that the world has abandoned them and Ukraine is finished.  You have to trust, as she did, that there will be an end to all the torture and the psychological pressure.

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And finally, her trust was rewarded and Tayra was included in an exchange on 17 June 2022.

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Since then she has been actively involved in a number of initiatives on the issue of captivity, such as giving testimony to the US Congress and co-founding the Ukrainian charity “Mechta” (the Dream) which works with the families of prisoners, and of dead and missing soldiers and civilians.  She also took part in the Invictus Games in Orlando 2022, winning 3 gold medals.  She has received a number of awards, including the US International Women of Courage Award in 2023.

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Volodymyr Tatarenko, a medic from Mariupol

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This is the story of one of Tayra’s “Angels”, Volodymyr Tatarenko.

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Volodymyr had been volunteering with Tayra’s Angels since 2014.  When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th of February 2022 he and his family were in Mariupol.  Volodymyr decided to join the regular army as there was a military unit stationed in his neighbourhood.  However on the day he went to sign up there were very long lines of volunteers (at least 150) and the recruiters did not seem to know what to do with all the volunteers. 

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At the same time the unit was being shelled by Russian aviation so Volodymyr called the Angels.  They went to Hospital 555, an emergency hospital, where Tayra gave them a car to transport the wounded and explained what they had to do.  Their main task was to defend and protect the hospital.   Volodymyr and 10 others from the territorial defence unit did their best to help the hospital operate in conditions of war. It was real hell there, full of wounded soldiers and large numbers of civilians all needing medical help, including many children, women and the elderly. There were horrific scenes. When a missile struck Orbita, a computer equipment repair centre in Mariupol, they were rescuing a child from a damaged car nearby. While they were getting the child, a girl aged about 10-12, out of the car a shell splinter fell and the child’s mother picked it up and ran after them believing that it was something from her child's body, some internal organ. “Look,” she cried. “It's something that fell out of my daughter!” On another occasion some parents brought in their baby. Both parents and baby were wounded and needed treatment. After the operation they stayed in the emergency hospital bomb shelter. The baby needed nappies, bottles with infant formula and teats for the bottles so the task was to find these things somewhere in Mariupol. That child did not make it.

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All this time there were battles in the city and the Russian encirclement was getting tighter and tighter.    It became clear that it was necessary to evacuate the hospital. The operating theatres were on both upper floors and they had to move them underground because of the constant bombardment. Once when an operation was in progress and a young man was lying on the operating table a bomb fell and he was buried under the ruins. Thelike thy had to dig him up from the wreckage and Volodymyr had the task of taking his body to the burial site.

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After that Volodymyr was assigned to the Azovstal hospital.  

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Volodymyr and the other two men in his team would try to get up at 4 or 4.30 in the morning while it was still dark. Under the cover of darkness when it was not so easy for the drones to locate them, the team would go to get the food needed for the 200 to 350 wounded patients in the hospital.

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After that their next task was hospital admission. They had to bring in new wounded soldiers and since the bomb shelter was underground it was not so easy to take them on stretchers down the stairs.  It was never ending.  After each outing there was some damage to the car, often a flat tyre so that Volodymyr had to take off the wheel. Then there was a missile strike near the hospital. It was a thermobaric bomb so there was a powerful shock wave and the gases gave the soldiers serious burns.  At that moment an operation was in progress. One of Volodymyr’s friends sent him prayers and he was reading them. Everyone else was praying too. They prayed because when you went out of the Azovstal on a mission or were just fixing a wheel or driving and you heard the sound of the missile or an aeroplane you often understood that you couldn't make it to the shelter, you just didn't have enough time to get there. You would try to hide under some barrels or some bits of metal and yes, at moments like that everyone would pray. Each day that you lived through in Azovstal was like going through a new stage of your life. 

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One of the things that made Volodymyr very upset was the men who were killed or died of wounds. The military term for the dead was the 200th. They had to take the bodies somewhere to bury them. Volodymyr found a cold dry place without sunshine and water and set up a kind of mini morgue there. The bodies of the dead were brought to him and Volodymyr, an Angel would, make the sign of the cross over them. Volodymyr felt hatred for the enemy and a great desire to take revenge. 

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Everyone understood that they would never come out of Azovstal. They wanted to fight to the end and it was better for them to die honourably.       

           

Volodymyr had a lot of tasks and responsibilities at the Zhelezyaka Hospital at the Azovstal factory and his team of three were the last to leave the hospital when they all went into Russian captivity.  Before they left they had to take out the wounded and dead. Volodymyr, a native of Mariupol, acted as a guide and was the first to come out leading a group of soldiers to the place of surrender outside the Azovstal. 

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When they were taken into captivity their barracks at Olenivka were two storey structures with just simple rooms without beds or mattresses. The POWs slept first on the concrete floor and later were provided with pallets.

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They all had to go through torture and beatings and after a month in captivity a soldier would be a completely different person, a person with an empty stare and forced to keep his  hands behind his back. The Russians did everything to break them down. Volodymyr stayed in Olenivka from 20th of May to 3rd of October 2022. About four months.

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It was even harder when he was transferred from Olenivka to Kamyshin in Russia’s Volgograd region. First was the “reception procedure”. Five hours of non-stop beating. They beat everyone. As soon as the POWs were taken out of the vehicles with their hands tied they had to squat, they were blindfolded and the Russians started beating them with sticks and electric shocks. When the Russians saw tattoos they would give those soldiers even more severe beatings. One man had a tattoo with a scarab, another had a tattoo with his favourite pit bull. The Russians thought those were some sort of Nazi symbols and that those people were Nazis which meant for them terrible people. Later Volodymyr found out that that particular “reception procedure” was reported by the media as the cruellest of all such “reception procedures” in Russia. Many people could not survive it and Volodymyr himself fainted five times. And in the background of all that there was women's laughter and the moans of tortured people. It was a terrible dissonance. It was horrific. 

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At first he was in a cell of 16 prisoners, then four were taken out so there were twelve left. They were all different. There was a soldier, a civilian, and an elderly man who got there quite by accident. They were all in that Russian hell. The Russians did not care whether you were elderly or young, whether you were wounded and limped or your hand had not healed after a fracture and was just dangling – none of that mattered at all. Everyone was beaten the same and the greatest fun for the Russians was to hit you on your weakest point, on your wound, and do it again and again. Every other day the Russians searched your cell. Everyone would be taken out into the corridor for a beating. By that time the Russians knew each of the POWs and they knew where to hit them to make it most painful. They particularly liked to hit your ribs. With broken ribs it was practically impossible to sleep, to turn, even to breathe deeply. You had to sit hunched over.  And then when you felt a little better the Russians would start it all again and again.

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There was a torture room next to Volodymyr's cell and they heard the cries of tortured people every day. Those screams were not like human screams. They were animal screams when a man was half a step away from his death. This was cruelty without any motivation at all.

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The young soldier in the cell was only 21 years old, only a little bit older than Volodymyr’s daughter. The Russians tied wires around the young man’s testicles and penis and tortured him for an hour with electric current. When the boy was brought back Volodymyr asked him: “What did the Russians want to know? What kind of information were they trying to get? What did they ask you?” “Nothing”. And really what could the young man have known? He was a young conscript. And to show him such a cruelty? A young man, a young recruit, a child? It was horrific!

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On 27th of October Volodymyr had his birthday. The day before his birthday Volodymyr was taken out for interrogation. The Russians put a bag on his head and tied wires to his little fingers and for an hour they tortured him with electricity. Some body organs stop functioning when that happens. Volodymyr still felt pain in his internal organs the following day and he knew that something had stopped working. The Russians believed that Volodymyr was a marine and that was why he would not crack. Torturing Volodymyr the Russians said, “It's your birthday tomorrow, isn't it? Don't you think it would be nice to execute you tomorrow? And on your gravestone there would be a nice date of death, the same as your birthday. 47 years old!”.

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The Russians were good as their word.  They came back at 5am in the morning to take Volodymyr out of his cell. When they left the barrack the Russians gave him the clothes in which he was brought there. This put Volodymyr on guard. The Russians took his prison clothes and ordered him to put on his own clothes.

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It was only when he was given a packed lunch that Volodymyr understood that he was going to be exchanged. They would not give a packed lunch to someone whom they had planned to execute.

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Volodymyr used to go into sleep in prison in Kamyshin with the thought “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. I managed to live through today and it made me a little stronger”. 

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It was hard to describe all the feelings that overwhelmed Volodymyr when he was exchanged. The main thought was that they had overcome. It was their victory.

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Volodymyr and the other men who were in the Zhelezyaka Hospital at the Azovstal and later went through torture and suffering in Olenivka and other Russian camps shared everything they had: a piece of bread, a glass of water. Volodymyr told his interviewer that the history of the defence of Mariupol will be part of the history of the war. He had seen what the Russians were like and understood that Ukrainians are free people, better than the Russians. And freedom is not just given, it is fought for. 

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Supplementary information from other Azovstal medics

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The surgeons at the Zhelezyaka Hospital in Azovstal operated practically non-stop. They did not take off their surgical gowns because there was a constant flow of wounded soldiers brought to the hospital. At first there was enough beds for the wounded, but later they had to put mattresses on the concrete floor or whatever they could find space and put the wounded there. As time passed and the missiles destroyed the operating theatre, the surgeons had to operate in the wards, practically in the sight of all as if it were a film. Amputation of limbs, abdominal dissection, chest dissection, everything. They had to operate in conditions that were not fit for conducting operations, since the hospital was in a bunker that could accommodate 125 people. But the fighting was intense and there were 350 wounded in the hospital. There were 4 surgeons and 3 anaesthetists. Once after a particularly fierce battle 124 wounded were brought to the hospital and they had to operate for 38 hours non-stop to save lives. The Azov defenders were truly amazing warriors. If they had light wounds they would say, “Doctor, I don't want to waste your time. Just bandage my wound and I will go back to fight.” 

Once a surgeon had just finished an operation and there was another wounded soldier waiting for his turn to be operated on. But the surgeon had a 7th sense that told him not to go inside the operation room. And in a second a thermobaric bomb hit the ventilation holes, powder gases came into the bunker and the shock wave threw everything some 5-7 meters. A fire started and smoke filled the bunker. It was impossible to breathe. The operation theatre was completely destroyed. The surgeons managed to take out 2 surgical tables and put them in the middle of the bunker where the operated soldiers had been taken. And after that the surgeons had to operate in full view of the wounded soldiers. 

When the surgeons were taken into Russian captivity they continued to help the wounded POWs as much as they could. There were approximately 600 wounded soldiers who were kept in the barracks together with soldiers who had not been wounded.  

       From the words of Yevhen Gerashchenko, the chief surgeon of Azovstal Zhelezyaka Hospital. 

 

The Russians beat the POWs to such an extent that broken bones in their legs would cut through the skin and stick out. A soldier with such an open fracture asked a Russian nurse to inject him with a painkiller and she answered, “I will give you a shot but you will die before the morning.” 

From the words of 60 year old Victor Bondarenko, one of the Azovstal paramedics.