Yulia Paievska, 53, widely known in Ukraine as Taira, has become a popular folk hero. She said the abuse began immediately after she was discovered at a checkpoint near Mariupol and taken prisoner, along with her driver, on March 16.
Paievska told CNN on Tuesday, nearly three weeks after she was released in a prisoner exchange on June 17. The abuse, including beatings, she said, was “extreme” and “nothing” stop for a minute for three months.”
From mid-March until mid-June, the couple was detained in occupied territory at the Donetsk pre-trial detention center by a combination of forces from Russia and the free Donetsk People’s Republic. confess, she said.
“Continually you are told that you are a fascist, a Nazi,” she said, comparing the conditions to a drunkenness. She said she was told it “would be better if you were dead than to see what happened next.”
She was frustrated that Paievska would not let her pro-Russian and pro-Russian separatist captors confess on camera to their alleged neo-Nazi connections, who, she said, “put me in solitary confinement. , into a dungeon without a mattress, on a metal bed. ”
Paievska’s popularity in Ukraine has grown since she first rose to prominence during the 2014 Maidan uprising, where she supported opponents of the then-pro-Russian president as a sex doctor. wish. From there, she headed east to the front lines as Ukrainian troops fought separatist forces in the Donbas region, eventually officially joining the Ukrainian armed forces.
Propaganda video
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February of this year, Paievska was in the southern city of Mariupol armed with a body camera, filming hours and hours of dramatic footage of wounded people arriving in emergency rooms. save them and try to save them.
As Russian forces closed in, Paievska managed to give one of his memory cards to journalists from the Associated Press, who were among the last to escape the city. Paievska said the card was hidden in the tampon. She told CNN she destroyed another card with her teeth and threw it out as she approached the checkpoint where she and her driver were taken.
Paievska said forces at the checkpoint soon recognized her, and within days of her abduction, she was forced to sit in front of Russian television cameras for days to shoot a 47-minute propaganda video. cleverly produced accused her of using children like humans. shield and organ harvesting and compare her to Hitler.
In the film, Paievska is brought into the interrogation room, handcuffed and hooded, and seated under bright light as the narrator presents the danger she is alleged to pose.
The video was broadcast by state channel NTV 12 days after Paievska’s arrest. During that time, and throughout her detention, Paievska was not allowed to contact her husband, Vadim Puzanov.
“You’ve seen too many American movies,” she said she was told. “There will be no calls.”
Instead, Paievska said, she was presented with a series of lies that repeatedly boasted about Russia’s non-existent military successes in eastern Ukraine. Eventually, she and the other detainees were able to piece together some facts about what was going on with the various pieces of information they gathered.
When Paievska was arrested, she was told she could face the death penalty. But one day she is released from her cell and the possibility of a prisoner exchange is mentioned, giving her hope.
On June 17, the exchange happened, and Paievska managed to call her husband for the first time in more than three months.
“I don’t recognize her [voice] Because I didn’t expect her to call me,” Puzanov said. Together with their daughter, the family reunited in the hospital where Paievska was taken by the Ukrainian military, a moment that Puzanov described as “a joyful event.” most glad. ”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the news in his nightly video address, saying: “Taira is at home. And we will continue to work to free the others.”
‘Cruel mode’
Paievska declined to say where the exchange took place or to whom the transaction took place. Since her abduction, the already light, heavily tattooed Paievska says she has lost 10 kilograms (more than 20 pounds) and is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
She said she will not return to the front lines anytime soon, for fear of becoming a burden on the forces.
Instead, she is focusing on qualifying for the 2023 Invictus Games for wounded veterans in swimming and archery. She suffered a hip injury that was aggravated by working at the front and had to have both hip joints replaced.
Paievska blamed the Kremlin’s powerful propaganda machine for fueling Russia’s war effort and, like Ukraine’s leaders, said Ukraine needed more help from the West to defeat Russia.
“This is a completely ruthless regime that wants to rule the world,” she said. “They told me that the whole world had to submit only to Great Russia and: ‘This is your fate. You have to accept, just stop resisting.”
