Ukrainian soldiers were dying on my cell floor

I had already made one life-changing decision when Russia invaded Ukraine: I volunteered to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces and defend my motherland. Now, fighting on the front lines near Kharkiv just five months later, I faced another big choice.

I was already wounded, having been hit by shrapnel when Russian forces bombarded our position from all directions. Our squad commander ordered us to retreat to safer ground, our evacuation point up the hill. But then he disappeared. It was up to me to lead the men in my unit to safety, including three who were badly injured. 

We made it 1.5 kilometers up the hill, with one of our comrades in a stretcher. But when we reached our defensive tree line, Russian soldiers suddenly emerged and fired at our feet and ordered us to surrender. I chose life. We laid down our weapons.

That split-second decision put me through more than three years of torture in Russian captivity: beatings, broken bones, electric shocks, hunger. I can count seven fellow Ukrainian POWs who died on the floor of my prison cell alone.

The day we were captured

As I said, I volunteered for this. Russia’s all-out invasion on February 22, 2022, was a call to arms. Soon, I was in the east defending the village of Dementiivka, strategically located between Russian territory and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. To keep Kharkiv out of Russian hands, we fought Russian forces that attacked us from two directions at once, firing constant mortar and artillery fire at our positions, with marines on one side and Wagner mercenaries on the other. 

So here I was. It was July 11, 2022, and Russian forces had unleashed on our unit with Grad rockets, mines, and tanks. We dug into a dense garden for cover, but we had no chance in the open. Several of my comrades were injured and one was killed.

We tried to save ourselves and evacuate, and now I was a prisoner of war. Our captors held us until a second group joined them, and then we were marched about five kilometers to their position. From there, they loaded us onto an armored personnel carrier and drove us to a settlement in Ukrainian territory they occupied.

The Russians forced me to run on a broken leg

Russian forces held us in a room and gave us canned food and bread. That night, they took us out one by one, beat us, and pointed rifles at our backs before interrogating us. Around midnight, Russian intelligence officers arrived, shined flashlights in our faces, and questioned us individually. They also tortured us with different devices, including a “tapik” [a Soviet era, hand-cranked field telephone] to deliver painful electric shocks.

The next morning, military police blindfolded us and bound our hands, and loaded us into the back of a Kamaz truck, driving us in an unknown direction. At some point, they pulled us out and threw me – still blindfolded and bound – from the truck, breaking my leg.

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They took us to a tent camp holding about 100 military and civilian prisoners just across the border, in Russia’s Belgorod region. For three days, I was forced to walk and run on my broken leg until it turned purple. Only then did they recognize the fracture and sent me to a tent hospital that treated Russian military personnel, where they finally put a cast on it.

From captivity to a three-minute call with my wife

That tent camp had more than 10 tents with up to 10 beds in each. During the day, we could only sit or lie down because they did not allow us to walk around. They fed us in a dining hall, where we were given whatever they had – rice, a piece of bread, borscht in a cup. I stayed there for five days before they sent me to a hospital in Kursk. 

After seven days, they flew me and the other patients to Simferopol, in Crimea [Editor’s Note: Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014]. I spent two weeks there before moving with the group to a POW collection center in Sevastopol. In Kursk, Simferopol, and Sevastopol, we were treated more or less normally. The military police guarding us there simply did their job without aggression and even gave us cigarettes, hygiene items, and some medicine.

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In Sevastopol, a Red Cross team let us write letters and send text messages home. They gave us books and brought us cigarettes. Ukrainian journalists also interviewed me there, although they later switched sides and became Crimean [pro-Russia] journalists. They also let me speak to my wife on WhatsApp for the first time. I talked to her for about three minutes but we couldn’t talk freely. The Russians recorded everything and later posted everything on Telegram [Editor’s Note: Kravchenko appears to be suggesting that the recordings were used for propaganda purposes, to make it appear that the prisoners were being treated humanely. It is generally regarded as a violation of international rules of war to publish images of POWs.)

I saw fellow prisoners die as conditions deteriorated

Two weeks later, they blindfolded and bound us again before flying us to Taganrog. During registration, several of us were severely beaten with fists, stun guns, and had dogs set on us. Five of us were in such bad shape that the detention center refused to accept us. We were sent back to Sevastopol on a 14-hour journey without food, water, or access to toilets  — we had to relieve ourselves into cups. I stayed in Sevastopol for another three months before they transferred me to Kamyshin in the Volgograd region.

Kamyshin was overcrowded, with 16 people packed into cells built for eight, and eight into cells built for four. We could only sit, always under camera surveillance. Any infraction meant they would drag us into a corridor out of sight of the cameras and beat us. 

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The interrogators also gave us electric shocks, placing a pillowcase over our heads and attaching wires to our fingers, toes, and genitals. Weekly trips to the bathhouse became another form of torture. We had to walk half-bent, with our hands behind our backs and our heads down, while guard dogs walked beside us. We were given 15 minutes in the bathhouse, but only one minute to actually wash – the rest was mostly beatings and electric shocks. 

We were constantly hungry because they gave us very little food: just a spoonful of porridge, or a couple of spoonfuls of soup with a little bit of cabbage, and a tiny piece of bread. No fruits or vegetables. We got tea, but without sugar. We never even saw sugar. 

Prisoners had lice, scabies, and some caught tuberculosis. They were isolated into three cells, eight to 10 men each, and given antibiotics but no vitamins. At least seven prisoners of war (POWs) died on my cell floor alone because of these dire conditions.

‘Is someone still waiting for me?’

On the cold morning of December 28, 2025 – more than three and half years after I was captured – our cell doors opened at 6 a.m. The Russian forces called us by our surnames, gave us mattresses, changed our clothes, and provided some food before loading us into a prison van. After a 12-hour drive, we were moved onto a plane. I believed at the time that we were being transferred again, with more abuse waiting for us.

We flew for about four hours, and when we got off the plane, they put us on buses with soft seats instead of the hard benches of a prison van. That was when I realized that this was most likely a prisoner exchange. We drove for another 12 hours, with stops along the way, until they finally untied our blindfolds at the Belarusian border. Their military police freed our hands and gave us food. Then I saw Ukrainian buses arriving adorned with our flags, and Russian POWs stepping out.

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On December 30, 2025, I arrived in Ukraine and was taken to a hospital in Chernihiv for examination. We were washed, given clean clothes, and fed. I was finally able to call my wife and told her I was home. My first question was, “Is someone still waiting for me?” She replied, “Of course, I’m waiting.” After three years, not everyone was as fortunate – some of the released prisoners learned their wives had gone abroad, remarried, or simply moved on. 

I found a new purpose after captivity

We spent a month at a reintegration center. I requested to continue serving because I wanted revenge, but my health forced me to leave the military. Instead, I began traveling to meet returning prisoners and using my experience to help them transition back to civilian life.

Eventually, I began working at the Kyiv Military Hub, helping demobilized soldiers and families of the missing and dead with documents, legal matters, and other needs. I still work there today while pursuing a master’s degree in psychology to better understand and support returning soldiers.

Today, certain memories still take me back to captivity – the blood-stained bathhouse and even the sound of a barking dog can trigger those painful days. Those things will not fade easily. And I think constantly about our guys who are still in captivity, who have been there for four years. Their health conditions are critical – we have to get them out of there.

Translated by Yuliia Rudenko

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