“It was getting worse and worse, harder and harder. We held out the defense for as long as possible,” the soldier from the Azov regiment, who took part in the battle for the Azovstal steelworks, told AFP. in Mariupol, a symbol of fierce Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion.
Leaning on crutches after his left leg was amputated, Vladyslav, 29, speaks to AFP in front of a huge poster hanging on the facade of Kyiv City Hall that reads “Free the defenders of Mariupol”. .
Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24: within days, Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, was surrounded.
Vladyslav and his comrades then took up positions in the huge and labyrinthine complex of Azovstal to continue fighting.
Under constant bombardment, he settled into a half-ruined bunker, going out during the day to perform his duties as a drone operator.
“The whole area was littered with pieces of buildings” and the soldiers were constantly short of water, food and ammunition, the young man recalls as passers-by in central kyiv, where almost normal life has resumed, stare at the empty leg of his brown bermuda shorts.
– Leaving on a stretcher –
Despite the rapidly deteriorating situation, the soldiers kept their spirits up, says Vladyslav: “The last days I was anticipating a kind of last battle. We were waiting for it and we were ready for it.”
Then, on May 15, an anti-tank missile hit him.
Rushed to the “medical bunker”, the soldier found himself on an improvised operating table, on the verge of death.
The next morning, he had his leg amputated. He is also seriously injured in the right eye.
After regaining consciousness for a few seconds and then fainting again, Vladyslav is carried out of the steelworks as part of a deal that Kyiv hoped to save Azovstal defenders with.
He remembers, lying down, seeing the insignia of Russian soldiers bearing the “Z” symbol used by his enemies.
Due to his injuries, he did not share the same fate as his comrades sent to the infamous Olenivka prison in the occupied part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where dozens of prisoners were killed by an explosion in July.
But weeks of captivity in a hospital in Donetsk brought him suffering of a different kind.
“There was moral pressure. No contact with relatives, no access to the phone,” says the soldier.
Medical care was “very low level” and medicine was in short supply.
“I was dripping like rotten meat because after being badly injured I only started receiving antibiotics on the fifth day,” he says.
According to Vladyslav, he and three other soldiers in his room received just enough food “so that the heart wouldn’t stop”.
“And we were told every day that nobody needed us, that we wouldn’t be traded, that everyone had abandoned us”.
– ‘Pressure from within’ –
Then his six weeks in captivity abruptly ended.
“We were woken up at 4 a.m., we read the lists (of prisoners, editor’s note), we were taken away, loaded into buses and transported until evening,” recalls Vladyslav.
More than a hundred Ukrainian prisoners were exchanged that day.
“I couldn’t breathe until I was on the Ukrainian side, out of range of the Russian artillery,” says the man, whose injuries do not prevent him from continuing to joke.
“I gave a lot of work to our doctors,” smiles this career soldier, who says he continues to respect certain military obligations.
He speaks very calmly. His voice only breaks once – when he speaks of the thousands of Ukrainian prisoners still in Russian captivity.
“It doesn’t leave me in peace. It’s what presses me inside. When the guys are back, I will be able to breathe more freely”.
