Ukraine, Avdiva (CNN)FamousUkrainianrescuer. For three months after she was captured in the southeastern city of Mariupol, Russian troops and separatist forces accused her guards of psychological and physical torture while in her captivity.
Yulia Paievska (53), widely known in Ukraine for her nickname Taira, has become a notorious folk hero. She was admitted at a checkpoint near Mariupol, and her abuse began shortly after she was taken prisoner with her driver on March 16, she said.
"For five days I had no food and practically didn't drink," she told CNN on Tuesday, almost three weeks after she was released on the prisoner's exchange on June 17. ..
From mid-March to mid-June, she said the pair was detained in the occupied territory of Donetsk's pretrial detention center by a combination of Russian and self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic troops.
"Always said you are a fascist, the Nazi," she said. She said she was told, "If you die, it's better than seeing what happens next."
Dissatisfied with Paievska's failure to give her Russian and pro-Russian separatist prisoners a camera confession that envisioned her connection to the neo-Nazis. She said. On a metal bunk bed, without a mattress.
Paievska's notoriety in Ukraine first became prominent during the 2014 Maidan uprising and has grown since helping pro-Russian presidents at the time protest as volunteer medicine. Did. From there she headed east, where Ukrainian troops fought separatist forces in the Donbus region and eventually officially joined the Ukrainian troops.
Propaganda Video
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February this year, Paievska was in a city in the south of Mariupol with a body camera. The scene where the injured arrived in the emergency room and the effort to save them was filming a dramatic time.
The approach of the Russian army allowed Paievska to deliver one of her memory cards to an Associated Press journalist. The card was hidden in a tampon, Paievska said. She told CNN that as she and her driver approached the checkpoint where she was taken, she destroyed her other card with her own teeth and she threw it away. ..
The checkpoint army quickly recognized her and within a few days of her kidnapping, she was forced to sit in front of a Russian television camera for several days. She uses her child as a human shield, harvests organs and compares them to Hitler.
In this movie, Paievska marches to the interrogation room, is handcuffed, put on her hood, and she plays the dangers she thinks she poses, while she is in harsh and bright light. You can sit down.
The video broadcast by the national channel NTV was released 12 days after Paievska was filmed. Meanwhile, and during her detention, Paievska was not allowed to contact her husband, Vadim Puzanov.
"You're watching too many American movies," she says. "There is no phone."
Instead, she says, Paievska was given a stable stream of lies boasting the success of the Russian army, which does not exist in eastern Ukraine. Eventually, she and the other detainees were able to stitch together some of the realities of what was happening with the various information they gathered.
When Paievska was arrested, she was told she could face her death penalty. But one day she was taken out of her cell, mentioning the possibility of her prisoner exchange, raising her hopes.
On June 17, an exchange took place and Paievska called her husband for the first time in more than three months.
"I didn't recognize her [voice] because she didn't expect her to call me," Pzanov said. The family reunited with her daughter at the hospital where Paievska was taken to the Ukrainian army. Pzanov described the moment as "the most enjoyable event."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the news on a nightly video address, "Tyra is already at home, and we work to free everyone else. I will continue. "
'Ruthless regime'
Paievska did not say where the exchange took place or for whom it was traded. Already a few, badly tattooed Paievska since her kidnapping says she has lost 10 kilograms (more than £ 20) and suffers from her stress disorder after her trauma.
She said she wouldn't be back on the front line soon because she was afraid of burdening her army.
Instead, she focuses on the 2023 Invictus Games qualifying for veterans injured in swimming and archery. She suffered an injury to her hip that was exacerbated by working on her anterior and replaced both hips.
Paievska blames the Kremlin's powerful propaganda aircraft for fueling Russia's war effort, and like Ukraine's leaders, Ukraine needs more Western support to defeat Russia. It states that there is.
"This is an absolutely ruthless government that wants to rule the world," she said. "They told me that the whole world only had to submit to Greater Russia:" This is your destiny. You have to accept, you just have to stop resisting. "