LVIV, Ukraine — Olha Kerod was running at a pharmacy in the western Ukrainian city when he received a desperate call from his teenage daughter, Anyuta.
“My daughter said, ‘Mom, anything exploded in Olenivka!'” she says. “He said they blew up a construction site and many other people died. “
Olenivka is a penal colony in eastern Ukraine occupied by Russian-backed forces. Russia has captured Ukrainian infantrymen there. On July 29, the day of the explosion, Olha’s husband, Stanislav (she calls him Stas for short) in this prison.
“Everyone would call me, text me and ask me, ‘Olha, Olha, what happened?'” she recalls. “But I didn’t know anything about Stas. “
He found that at least 50 imprisoned infantrymen had been killed and dozens more wounded in Olenivka. The dark news came after horrific videos that gave the impression on social media of a Russian soldier castrating and then killing an imprisoned soldier. terrifying uncertainty of her husband’s captivity as she struggled to remain optimistic.
“I didn’t cry, I didn’t panic,” she says. I said to myself and my daughter: don’t do anything until we’re safe. “
At the time, Olha had set his sights on Stas, 39, for five months, since Russian forces bombed and bombed the southeastern port city of Mariupol, where he served as a naval border guard.
The Russian siege of the city left thousands of infantrymen and civilians dead and almost all buildings were damaged. This spring, Stas joined several thousand infantrymen who barricaded themselves under Azovstal, a sprawling local metallurgical plant, in a final final fight. NPR came to Stas there WhatsApp.
He sent several voice memos describing the constant shelling and shelling, how they lacked medicine and food, and how relieved he was that his own circle of relatives had escaped from Mariupol. In May, Stas and 2,000 other infantrymen left Azovstal in what many assumed was an evacuation. Instead, they have become prisoners of Russia.
“We are evacuated in captivity,” his latest told NPR.
A few weeks later, Olha met with NPR in front of the Ukrainian-Greek Catholic Church in Lviv, where he prayed.
“I pray for all the soldiers, only for Stas,” the 36-year-old said in a choppy voice. “I will continue to pray until everyone returns home. “
Olha and Stas married in 2005, a year after meeting at a friend’s wedding. He was gentle, intelligent and handsome, she says, but taciturn, “a soldier at heart, who helps keep his feelings inside. “
When he was on duty, he would say the same thing to Olha: “Everything is fine, don’t worry. “Ukrainian rock band Skryabin with Olha.
Stas resumed his duties just before the invasion of Russia in February. He suggested to Olha that he take Anyuta and western Ukraine, near NATO’s border with Poland. Olha first resisted, until he discovered Anyuta crying at night because his classmates had fled. When the bombing began, Olha and Anhuta crossed the country to the western city of Lviv. Soon after, the Russian attack on Mariupol intensified, leaving thousands dead and his city in smoking ruins.
Stas and the other foot soldiers retreated to Azovstal, a metal factory that hired thousands of people in Mariupol. The factory had an extensive network of underground shelters, where infantrymen and many civilians withdrew.
Olha learned from reports that the Russians were bombing and bombing the metallurgical plant. But Stas’ text messages about the siege were calm: “Everything is fine. Don’t worry. “
He sent Olha photos of himself and the other foot soldiers making pancakes out of the rest of the flour and sugar stored in the factory. Olha says it looked like he had an old man of at least 10 years.
After the infantrymen have become Russian prisoners, Olha says he may simply not touch Stas directly. He only heard her voice once, when he called her from a number he didn’t recognize.
“He told me that the internal situations of the prison were terrible, that the inmates fed only once every two days, that hygiene was non-existent,” he said. After that, he won a few short messages that said, “Everything is fine. “well, don’t worry.
A prisoner exchange in late June gave Olha hope. And while Stas was not among the released Ukrainian prisoners, he heard that there would be more exchanges.
Then, on July 29, it’s the explosion.
The explosion destroyed a warehouse where the prisoners had recently been transferred. Images of charred bodies have given the impression on social media.
Ukraine said Russian forces blew up the building to hide the torture they had inflicted on Ukrainian prisoners. Russia, in turn, accused Ukraine of killing its own infantrymen to prevent them from speaking.
“I didn’t, that such a thing can happen, that even the Russians can do such a thing,” he said. “It probably surprised everyone. “
Hundreds of kilometers to the east, in the capital of Kyiv, Alla Samoilenko also surprised.
The film’s casting director is desperately searching for news about her 27-year-old son, Ilya.
“I heard rumors,” she says. It’s very difficult. “
Alla says Ilya joined the Ukrainian military in 2015, while studying history at university. The seizure of Crimea by Russia and its allies in the eastern Donbass region convinced him to join, his mother says.
He chose a regiment called Azov, which is reputed to block a past Russian attack on Mariupol in 2014. The regiment has its origins in a volunteer battalion founded by a far-right nationalist, but experts say most of the radicals were left after the battalion. The Kremlin calls the regiment Nazis, which infuriates Alla Samoilenko.
“Russia looks at itself when it talks about the Nazis,” he says. “It is Russia that is behaving in a fascist manner. “
He feared that the Russians would use the captured Azov fighters for propaganda purposes. A Russian TV station showed a hospitalized soldier saying that fighting the Russians “will never lead to anything good. “kill?” Some Russian politicians have demanded that Ukrainian infantrymen be tried for war crimes.
Alla spoke to his son while he was entrenched under Azovstal, but says he hasn’t heard anything from him since he was taken prisoner. He knew that many infantrymen of the Ilya Regiment were in Olenivka. He asked for the help Internacional. de the Committee of the Red Cross, which under foreign law deserve access to prisoners of war. ICRC representatives were educated and “full of mercy” at the meeting, he said. But after that, he didn’t hear anything.
“We need to take even very small steps to help,” she says, describing the search for data about her son. “But we don’t know where to go. “
The Russian government prevented the Red Cross and other independent investigators from entering the blast site. Instead, they brought in their own experts, who repeated the Kremlin’s arguments that Ukraine and the United States were to blame for the explosion.
In ukrainian cities, families of imprisoned infantrymen took to the streets to demand redress and justice.
Yaroslava Ivantsova, 48, protested in the central region of Kirovograd, where she lives with her daughter and grandchildren after escaping the fall of Mariupol. She lost contact with her husband of 50 years, Nikolai Ivantsov, after that in Azovstal. Her daughter Viktoriia Lyashuk, 27, had also not heard from her husband, Oleksii, any other Azov wrestlers, since then.
“The Red Cross contacted us once, right after they were taken prisoner, and they told us they had been taken to Russian-controlled territory,” Yaroslava said. “And that. “
He met Nikolai when she was in her freshman year of college and he was a new army recruit. Even after decades together, and 4 children, 4 grandchildren, Yaroslava says they were inseparable. Both were gardening and he liked to show her his collection of antique coins. “He’s a bit of an amateur archaeologist, with special gadgets and maps, with all the interest of a child,” he says with a smile.
Like Alla Samoilenko, Yaroslava had read that Azov’s infantrymen were in the Olenivka penal colony. Since the explosion, she and Viktoriia have spent hours scouring Russian social media for the main points about Nikolai and Oleksii.
A few days after the explosion, the Russian military published a list of wounded. Ivantsova saw her son-in-law’s call on the injured list.
“We called the hospitals in the occupied territories to find out which ones had taken the wounded,” he said, “but unfortunately we couldn’t get any information. The hospitals only said they had no Ukrainian infantrymen there.
Nikolai’s call is not on the list. Nor Alla Samoilenko’s son, Ilya. They didn’t listen to the soldiers.
“I mean, [Russia] can kill them all, any responsibility,” Alla says. “And no one in the world can do anything. “
Back in Lviv, Olha Kerod gained more news. She won a text message from her husband, Stas.
“He wrote to say he was alive,” she says. That he misses us very much. That he is tired and wonders if other people have forgotten about him and the other soldiers.
Ukrainians have not forgotten. Giant banners committed to “Azovstal defenders” hang from administrative buildings across the country. Olha recently posted a video on Facebook of infantrymen singing a song in the catacombs of Azovstal, before the final fall of their city, trapped underground and still free. .
Olha clings to the hope that there may be another prisoner exchange. “One day the Russians say yes, the next day they say no,” he says. “It’s a void I’ve lived with for months. So we wait.
The Azovstal infantrymen who survived the Olenivka explosion face a fate. The head of a Russian proxy state in occupied eastern Ukraine said there were plans to bring Azovstal’s infantrymen to justice in Mariupol.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry says the Russian troops, who are now Mariupol, are construction cages for infantrymen imprisoned at the city’s philharmonic, where the trial will take place. The Ukrainian government says the trial could begin overnight.
Hanna Palamarenko contributed to this from Odessa, Ukraine, and Kateryna Korchynska from London.
WRVO – Law enforcement in New York is reclaiming two years of lost commemoration ceremonies, held at the New York State Fair. In sweltering heat monday, the names of fallen officials on Law Enforcement Day at the Fair were read.
WSKG: Nearly one million Pennsylvanians who have federal student loan balances could be eligible for a full repayment under President Joe Biden’s bailout. That’s according to data from the U. S. Department of Education. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security shows that about 1. 8 million people in the state of Keystone have student debt.
A new ballot shows that the majority of Pennsylvania’s electorate surveyed is confident in the final results of the 2020 presidential election. More than 500 registered voters responded to the survey, and only about 70% say votes were counted in the 2020 election correctly.
WSKG connects you with local and global news and arts, radio and television. Subsidiary NPR and PBS.
CONTACT USEmail: WSKGcomment@wskg. org
Phone: 607. 729. 0100
Address: 601 Gates Road Suite 4, Vestal, NY 13850-2288
DONATE
Pay a subscription bill
Full frequency indexed here
89. 3fm Binghamton91. 1fm Corning, Elmira88. 7fm Hornell90. 9fm Ithaca89. 9fm Odessa91. 7fm Oneonta90. 5fm Watkins Glen
91. 5 Binghamton105. 9 Cooperstown90. 7 Corning88. 1 Greene, Norwich92. 1 Ithaca
Binghamton46. 1 Broadcast TV7 Time Warner Cable1221 Time Warner Digital Cable
Elmira30. 1 Broadcast TV8 Time Warner Cable1221 Time Warner Digital Cable
Oneonta, Cooperstown8 Time Warner Cable1221 Time Warner Digital Cable
Cable digital Warner Hornell1221 Time