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Oleksiy Anulya shortly after being released from Russian captivity in January 2023 (left) and in the hospital about 12 months later (right). Foto:
Privat (l.); Fedir Petrov / DER SPIEGEL
A Prisoner of War Describes Captivity in Russia “At Night, I Prayed I Wouldn’t Survive to the Next Day”
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Oleksiy Anulya reported for military duty. Russian soldiers took him prisoner. How does one survive hunger, torture and rape? Here, a former prisoner of war tells his story.
By Alexander Kauschanski in Ternopil, Ukraine • 24.06.2024, 09.58 Uhr
“At one point, I imagined escaping from the prison. Not to return to Ukraine. It would have been enough to make it to the nearest village, hide in some farmyard and eat pig slop at night. Or at least be shot to death trying to climb over the fence, instead of dying this agonizingly slow death.”
It’s mid-January and Oleksiy Anulya is lying in Hospital N. 1 in Ternopil, located in western Ukraine. His right arm hangs in a sling. The 30-year-old is recovering from a shoulder operation on the trauma surgery ward. It is the 36th time in just over a year that Anulya has received treatment in a hospital.
When the soldier was released on New Year’s Eve 2022 after almost 10 months as a Russian prisoner of war, he was emaciated to the point that he was difficult to recognize. He was missing teeth, the flesh on his legs was rotting and several bones were broken. A former kickboxing champion, Anulya’s muscles were gone. More than one year later, he is still struggling to recover.
https://e3fb164fe6209010fe4cbd3876a46541.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html DER SPIEGEL 26/2024
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 25/2024 (June 15th, 2024) of DER SPIEGEL. SPIEGEL International
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the two countries have exchanged prisoners on more than 50 occasions. More than 3,000 Ukrainians have been released, including Oleksiy Anulya. Because he has provided such detailed accounts of his time in prison, Anluya has since become something of a media phenomenon in Ukraine, with millions of people having watched his interviews on YouTube.
On this evening, he will end up speaking for more than six hours – sitting on his hospital bed, lying down, snacking on chocolate pralines. Only once will he interrupt the conversation for a brief bathroom break.
Anulya says that he talks about his time in Russian captivity to make the injustices he experienced visible. And to remind the public of the more than 8,000 Ukrainians who are still locked away in Russian prisons.
Oleksiy Anulya sitting on his hospital bed in January 2024: The 36th time he had been treated in a hospital in just over a year. Foto:
Fedir Petrov / DER SPIEGEL
It isn’t possible to confirm every detail of Anulya’s story. In Russia’s war against Ukraine, information forms another battle line where where truth fights with lies, propaganda with facts. Very little information leaks out of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship, and Russia’s detention centers are particularly shielded from prying eyes. Nevertheless, videos from the inside regularly make their way out – videos that show torture and bear witness to systematic brutality.
Despite a lack of access, human rights organizations and the United Nations have documented the conditions for Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russian captivity. The UN has spoken to more than 200 liberated Ukrainians for this purpose. In its dossiers, it accuses Russia of violating international humanitarian law, and possibly committing war crimes. The list of allegations includes prisoner abuse, inadequate nourishment, poor medical care, torture, sexualized violence and executions. Anulya is quoted in one of the documents.
DER SPIEGEL investigated Anulya’s account as far as possible. We compared medical records, photo material and videos with his narrative and checked them against reports from international organizations. His medical documents, photos of his injuries and his emaciated body speak to the consequences of imprisonment in Russia. Anulya tells the story of his stint as a prisoner of war in his own words.
“I was a soldier, an enemy, a Ukrainian”
Oleksiy Anulya before the Russian invasion. He used to work as a bodyguard for a Ukrainian oligarch. Foto: Privat
“On February 24, 2022, my mobile phone woke me up. A childhood friend was calling from Russia. From her husband’s factory site, they were firing missiles at Ukraine. ‘Isn’t it great?’ she said. ‘Soon, we’ll be living in one country.’
One day after the start of the war, Russian troops surrounded my hometown of Chernihiv, just 90 kilometers from Russia. I had previously working as a bodyguard for a Ukrainian oligarch. But now, I reported for military service to defend my country and my children.
One last time, I returned home. Without really saying goodbye, I put my family in a car heading for Kyiv. I then got into the shower and started crying. I was scared that I would never again see my mother, my wife, my little son and my daughter.
In early March, we were in Lukashivka, on the lookout for enemy troops. Our mission was to protect the village so that civilians could continue escaping along the country road. Late at night, we lay down to get some sleep in an abandoned house at the edge of the village. Early the next morning, I woke up. I could hear tanks. Then an explosion, and a second, a third. The Russians were entering the village.
A detonation threw me to the ground. My helmet was shattered. My ears were ringing. I felt a piece of bone in my mouth. My comrade was lying on the floor. Half of his head was missing. I shook him, unable to comprehend that he was dead.
A destroyed house in a Ukrainian village near Chernihiv in 2022. Foto: NurPhoto / IMAGO
I crawled out of the house, saw the tanks coming at me, and ran. I hid in a ditch and heard them searching the houses. I pointed my rifle under my chin. If they found me, I was prepared to pull the trigger. I stayed there for 12 hours.
When it grew quiet, I crawled out. It was nighttime. I crawled through the darkness. I couldn’t tell if the noises I heard came from wild boars or the Russians. The next morning, an old lady saw me. She must have betrayed me. A short time later, four soldiers rushed toward me, pointing their rifles at me. Were they going to kill me?
They robbed me – my knife, my watch, my phone. When their commander arrived, I was told to remove my coat. Underneath, they saw my wounds and my torn uniform – and realized I was a soldier, an enemy, a Ukrainian.
“You’re a kickboxer, aren’t you?”
The soldiers brought me to an old farm near the Belarusian border. They tied me up and threw me into a room with another Ukrainian soldier. Filthy animal, the soldiers said when they saw that he had soiled himself. One shot, and he was dead.
They beat me. One soldier pointed his rifle at my knee. At first, he wanted information. Then, he said: ‘Ok, you scumbag Ukrainian, have you washed your ass?’ He told me to undress. He pulled down his pants. His knees were touching my calves. He grabbed my behind.
I wasn’t able to free my hands. Another soldier held me down and said: ‘Faster. I want a turn too.’ Outside, dead bodies were burning on a truck, and I was covered in blood. Suddenly, there was a detonation, Ukrainian artillery attacked the site. The soldiers ran away. I was left behind, naked on the ground.
They came back the next morning. They tied my hands with a cable and pulled me up to the ceiling. And there I hung. Before long, I couldn’t feel my hands anymore. They turned purple and swelled up to the size of my thighs. Every couple of hours, different soldiers showed up to beat me. I spent several days in unbearable pain. My medical files show the consequences: overstretched muscles and ligament damage.
I was saved by a miracle: The site was fired on once again, so the soldiers pulled me down. A new Russian soldier recognized me: ‘You’re a kickboxer, aren’t you?’ He told me he had lost to me in a competition once. I braced myself for the worst. But he bandaged up my wounds, brought me food and took me to the toilet. One morning, he handed me thermal pants. ‘You’re going to be taken away,’ he said. ‘It will be harder in Russia, but your chances of survival are better.’
Oleksiy Anulya as a kickboxer before the Russian invasion. A Russian soldier recognized him from a competition. Foto: Fedir Petrov / DER SPIEGEL
“We’re going to give you your very own Auschwitz”
In a small bus, they drove me across the border to a tent camp. A few weeks later, they drove me and other prisoners of war to a detention center in Kursk. I spent 40 days there. In early May, they put us in an airplane, our mouths taped shut and sacks over our heads. They told us we were flying home. When we got out, a Russian special forces unit beat us. My leg had started to rot, and it hurt like hell when I stretched it out. So I held it away from my body and hopped on the other one. Immediately, the Russians started calling me ‘grasshopper.’
That night, we reached Penal Colony Nr. 1 in Donskoy, near Tula. Bright spotlights were shining on the two-story prison behind a wall topped with barbed wire. The guards beat us with clubs and tasered us. They pushed 50 of us into a small yard where we had to wait for hours. We were told we had to pee in a canister, but we weren’t allowed to empty it on Russian soil. Whoever filled the canister had to drink it.
Every morning, we had to get up at 5:50 a.m. They forced us to sing the Russian national anthem over and over again in the icy cell. For breakfast, they gave us three spoonfuls of porridge, a thin slice of white bread and a small glass of boiling hot water.
At 9:30 a.m., the guards led us to the yard. They called us ‘fascists,’ and said: ‘We’ll set up your very own Auschwitz.’ They beat us with pipes. Meanwhile, the others sang the Russian national anthem. We could still hear the screams of the ones being tortured. Few things are more frightening than the howls of grown men.
Most of the time, we had to stand in the cell with our hands behind our backs and our heads bowed. One knock from a guard meant we had to greet the ‘boss.’ Two knocks: We had to report how many prisoners were in the cell. Three: 500 squats. Four: shout ‘Pika-pikachuuu’ like the yellow Pokémon. Five knocks: Yell ‘Zelenskyy is a faggot. Biden is a faggot. Putin is our president.’
At night, I would pray that I wouldn’t live to see the next day. My heart was pounding 24/7. I was constantly expecting them to open the cell, beat, choke, humiliate me. There was always somebody screaming in the hallway. When I looked at my fellow prisoners, I saw the fear in their eyes.
The gate of a Russian penal colony Foto: Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP
One time, I was forced to chew on my filthy socks for three hours. They pulled my teeth for fun. They forced me to carry water in my mouth from a puddle to another spot of the yard. Fourteen times – I was counting – I hand to sit on the electric chair until my entire body spasmed.
Once, I was bleeding so heavily that they took me to the prison doctor. ‘The guards aren’t beating you, they are reeducating you,’ she said, instead of treating me. ‘We are vaccinating you against fascism, against being a Nazi.’ I washed my self-made bandages with my own urine.
At 10 p.m., we were allowed to go to sleep. We would hardly be asleep before a guard would yell into the cell: ‘Get up you bitches!’ We would then start doing squats – 500, often 1,000. Over and over, prisoners would break down, mostly the older one, the starving, the weak. Their bodies remained lying there until they were dragged out the next evening.
“I pulled the sheet from my bed, intending to hang myself from the bars”
In late August 2022, after three-and-a-half months, they moved me to a penal cell. I was all alone. Water was dripping from the moldy walls. There was no window, just a flickering lightbulb. When winter arrived, the cold was almost unbearable. Only one thought kept me alive: If I were to die in Russia, my children wouldn’t be able to visit me at my grave.
I fed myself on toothpaste from the garbage, I chewed on toilet paper to fight the hunger. In the yard, I collected earthworms – no piece of chocolate since then has tasted as good. One time, I managed to catch a rat. The guards saw on the surveillance video that I had moved. They dragged me out of the cell, but I had already put it in my mouth. The animal was scratching and bit my tongue. The guards beat me until they saw blood running out of my mouth. It wasn’t mine. I happily crawled back to my cell. The rat would help me survive.
In December, the guards showed me a list, they were planning a prisoner exchange. My name was the only one that wasn’t marked. They said they were going to keep me there. That day, I pulled the sheet from my bed, I wanted to hang myself from the bars. Then, something unexpected happened: My dead grandmother appeared at the sink. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t got your children any New Year’s presents yet.’ The hallucination saved me. Before I could hang myself, the guards pulled the door open.
Two days later, on December 28, I was told to pack my things. I could hardly walk anymore. I first flew to Kursk. The next morning, they loaded us into two buses. The Russian guards said that we were going to be shot. The soldier sitting next to me in the bus whispered: ‘I’m going to run away. I can’t bear it anymore.’ When the bus stopped and the guards got off, we started running – but we stumbled and fell down.
A man boarded the bus. ‘Is this what Ukrainian heroes look like?’ he said. At first, I thought the Russians were making fun of us. But standing in front of us was a Ukrainian intelligence officer. He helped us up.
Oleksiy Anulya after being exchanged on December 31, 2022. “Is this what Ukrainian heroes look like?” Foto: Privat
When we got off the bus, I felt numb. To the left, I could see Russian prisoners of war, Chechens with their beards, well-fed, that’s how I remember it. We were exchanged. At night, shortly before New Year’s 2023, we returned to Ukraine.
“My son didn’t recognize me”
We had hardly crossed the border when the Russians attacked with missiles. In a transit camp in Sumy, we were told how things stood in Ukraine. Kherson had been liberated, the region surrounding Kharkiv – and Chernihiv, my hometown – was also no longer under Russian occupation. I was free, but I felt nothing. No joy, no anger.
My family came that same day. My wife didn’t believe until the last moment that I had been released. My son, now five years old, didn’t recognize me. My older daughter cried when she saw how emaciated I was. I wanted to know how they were doing – and to tell them what had happened to me.
But I couldn’t find the words.
I learned that my father was dead. He had also been captured by Russian soldiers. In a church, they had burned him alive.
I only ate a few bites of all the food my family had brought along. My stomach had shrunk. When they had to leave after an hour, I exhaled. I had grown used to being alone.
“It took a lot longer than that before I learned to smile again”
Oleksiy Anulya in his hospital room in Ternopil.
Oleksij Anulja auf seinem Krankenhauszimmer in Ternopil: Seine Muskeln waren gerissen, die Menisken beschädigt Foto: Fedir Petrov / DER SPIEGEL
Before my captivity, I had weighed 102 kilograms. I weighed 40 kilograms less when I returned. My nose was broken, my jaw dislocated. My collar bone and eight ribs fractured. My muscles were torn, my meniscus damaged.
In some spots, my rotting legs had turned black. When the camp doctors saw them, they put me in a wheelchair and brought me to a hospital. Some doctors wanted to amputate my legs, but others didn’t give up on me. It paid off: After a few weeks, I could stand again, and a few weeks after that, I could walk.
It took much longer for me to learn to smile again.
I was treated in Ukrainian hospitals for six months, and for four months in Israel and Latvia. I only returned home in early November 2023. ‘I feel so sorry for dad,’ my daughter said. ‘He has grown so weak.’ My son said that I had let the family down. He wanted me to promise that I would never go away again. But I couldn’t. Things are difficult with my wife. We’ve almost separated twice. She thinks its selfish of me to want to go back to the army at some point. I tell her that I have to so that our children won’t also go to war one day.”
With reporting by Katja Lutska
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