Stories from Captivity: Who Can Get Putin to Unblock Prisoner Swap

 

Since the summer, Russia has blocked the exchange of prisoners with Ukraine. However, negotiations to continue the process are ongoing. Petro Jatsenko, representative of the Coordinating Staff for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, spoke about this the other day on the "Nastojaše vreme" TV channel. The Ukrainian side is ready for an exchange, but everything depends on Russia, Yatsenko said. However, according to him, Russia is not interested in the fate of its prisoners, so the Kremlin is delaying the exchange and creating various obstacles.

According to Ukrainian authorities, as of November 17, 2023, 4,337 Ukrainians are known to be in Russian captivity. Of these, 3,574 are military personnel and 763 are civilians. These are people whose stay in Russian captivity has been confirmed.

 

Prisoners from "Azovstal"

 

Russia uses spectacular illegal trials of Ukrainian prisoners of war and captured civilians, experts emphasize, to confirm narratives that justify the attack and war against Ukraine, as well as to morally oppress Ukrainian society.

The court of the self-styled "DNR", which was recently established by the occupiers, convicted three "Azov" fighters who defended Mariupol after the invasion. They are senior sergeant Gennady Kharchenko, junior sergeant Alexiy Zhernovsky and senior soldier Ihor Kim.

They are accused of allegedly committing crimes against the civilian population. Kharchenko was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Kim and Zernovski to 24 years each, and all are serving prison terms in a high-security penitentiary.

"Novosti iz Azov" spoke with Oksana Gurskaja, Gennadi Harchenko's colleague. She said that Gennadij went to the front as a volunteer back in 2014, and in 2017 he joined the ranks of "Azov". At the time of the invasion, he was serving in Mariupol. Together with other fighters, he ended up in Azovstal.

 

"When there was a chemical attack on them and there were no means of protection, he wrote 'let them poison us, just let them add something soporific to that gas so we fall asleep and that's it.'

It was very difficult, but he persevered. He will write a message to my mother on May 16 (2022) to tell me that everything will be fine, that he will be out of contact for three or four months, but that he will be back. We didn't really understand what it was about, but the next day we saw and realized that he was captured.

The first photos of him on the bus have appeared. Then I learned from the boys who were exchanged that they were followed by Ossetians and that they were so afraid of the "Azovs" that they forbade them to look in their eyes or touch them. They said: Satan helped you. It is impossible in these conditions to offer such resistance and kill so many of our people," said Gurskaja.

 

"They kept them in the sun for 10 hours"

 

After "Azovstal", Gennady Harchenko ended up in prison in Olenivka in the occupied territory of Donbass. He was in the same barracks where the explosion occurred on the night of July 29, 2022.

The interlocutor says that the conditions there were so terrible that Gennadij immediately lost 30 kg.

"For his birthday, he got a few pieces of leftover bread, which the boys simply didn't eat and threw into his hat. He was so happy that he could eat more bread that day that tears came to his eyes. They were constantly forced to stand in small courtyards in extreme heat, without water, for eight to 10 hours. And in his spare time, when he happened to be there, he taught the boys English. There is no notebook, no pen, no textbook, the roof is about to fall. That was the circle. And the boys were so happy and attached to him that he could distract them and occupy their minds with something," said Oksana Gurskaja.

After the explosion in the prison in Olenivka, according to the friends of "Azov", the captured Ukrainians were taken for interrogation, and only after that the wounded were loaded into the "Kamaz" and taken to the hospital in Donetsk.

 

"Torture in Cellars"

 

In addition to Olenivka, it is also known that Gennady Kharchenko was in prison in Horlivka and Taganrog in Russia, according to a friend.

During the interrogation, which the woman saw, the Ukrainian was criticized for the book he wrote before the invasion - "Diary of an Artillery". The book talks about the war through the eyes of historians.

"They blame him for the book he wrote. They tell him that he is a "fascist", a "Nazi", that he "raised a generation of the same Nazis". He has a tattoo on his arm, he made it literally a year before the war - these are runes. And clinging to those runes, each of which means that the black sun is, so to speak, "the symbol of fascism, Nazism", they began to inquire about Blavatka. But he is a historian, so he answered every question they asked. And at the end of this video they say: "Since you are Azov, you are warriors, how could you allow yourself to be captured, you should have been killed by weapons.

He was then in Horlivka, they were kept in a pit - a basement. He was tortured mainly because of the fact that he knew the Soviet Union, but for some reason he didn't like it," Oksana recalls.

Gurskaya added that Gennady Kharchenko is on the prisoner lists of the Ukrainian side, however, Russia is currently delaying the process of exchange negotiations.

 

"Strangling, Freezing, Suffocating"

 

In the Russian Federation, demonstrably illegal trials are also being conducted against civilian hostages who are

arrested in the occupied territories.

Thus, in July of this year, the military court in Rostov-on-Don announced the sentences to residents of the Kherson region - Yuri Domanchuk and Vitaly Skakun. They were sentenced to more than 20 years in prison. They are accused of allegedly attempting to assassinate the so-called deputy governor of the occupied part of the Kherson region, Vitaly Bulyuk, who was appointed by Russia, on December 12 last year. He then suffered moderate injuries, and his driver died.

According to the human rights organization Zmina, the presiding judge in this case, Roman Plisko, repeatedly imposed similar sentences on several Crimean Tatar political prisoners.

Vitaly Skakun's wife, Kristina Henrik, told "Novosti iz Azov" that when Buljuk was killed, her husband was visiting a friend in Skadovsk. Both were taken into custody the next day, December 13, and began to force them to confess.

"The first month was continuous torture. Everything was there: burning, strangulation, suffocation in water, freezing, electric torture and hammering. There great force was used against him. And he wrote in a letter to me that there were times when he really hoped that it would be the last blow, because he couldn't do it anymore. But they stopped and repeated several times. This lasted for a month. It was December, winter, and he had been spending his evenings in the fenced doghouse outside for about a week. They fed him raw buckwheat once every few days and gave him a bottle of water," his wife recounts the conditions in which this resident of Kherson was imprisoned.

 

"They were in every remand prison"

According to Heinrikova, during his months-long stay in Čongar, he was beaten once a week in front of everyone in the corridor of the institution where he was detained.

"Then they beat him in every remand prison where he was brought. He even said that, apparently, in his case there is some kind of personal characteristic. Stage - Csongar, then Crimea - Simferopol, then Krasnodar, Rostov. They beat him in every remand prison," says the interlocutor.

At first, there was no confirmed information about Vitalij Skakun's whereabouts, according to his wife. He is now on the exchange lists as a civilian. The man is in custody in Novocherkassk, Rostov Region, Russia.

He was sentenced in the first instance on July 6 to 24 years, of which four years in prison and 20 years of strict regime. After an appeal, the sentence was reduced to two months.

Given the hostilities and the Russian occupation of parts of the southern territories of Ukraine, the editorial office cannot obtain official confirmation of some of the statements made or independently verify them.

More than nine years in captivity

 

Some hostages have been in Russian captivity since 2014. Among them is Valentin Vihivski, a native of Kyiv, a graduate of the National University "Kiev Polytechnic Institute". In September 2014, he went to Crimea for an aviation exhibition and disappeared. Only a month later, the relatives were informed that Valentin had been arrested by the Russian special services.

At the end of 2015, he was sentenced to 11 years in a maximum security prison for alleged espionage. Valentin is serving his sentence in the city of Kirovo-Chepetsk, Kirov Oblast, Russia.

His father, Petro Vihivskii, told "Novosti iz Azov" that because of his open pro-Ukrainian stance and refusal to do any work for the benefit of the Russian economy, the man is constantly in a detention center.

After the complete invasion of Russia and the collapse of diplomatic relations, the prison conditions became even more difficult.

"Now the post office is not working, there is a big problem with correspondence. You have to find different schemes to send a letter and then receive a letter from him. The next thing is that you cannot transfer money to the personal account that the prisoners have to buy some goods in the store there. And that is very important, because it is difficult to live in the prison block, at least in the prison where my son is, without shopping in the store.

We know before that the consul occasionally came there. Therefore, they could not apply any repression to the prisoners. We don't know that now, because there is no consular control anymore. Not only over my son, but also over all Ukrainian prisoners," said Petro.

Petro Vihivski has been dealing with the issue of exchanging his son for more than nine years. Now, according to him, the situation has become much more complicated. The mechanisms of extradition, exchange, or transfer to Ukraine to serve a sentence according to the convention signed between Ukraine and the Russian Federation do not work.

"The exchange of prisoners of war and civilians who were imprisoned before the events of 2022 is not being considered at all now," Petro added.

 

"Russia does not want to return its own"

 

Lawyer Nikola Polozov believes that Russia blocked the process of exchange of captured military personnel because it is not interested in the return of ordinary soldiers.

"The Kremlin absolutely does not need Russian soldiers who are in Ukrainian captivity. If we are talking about the desire of the Kremlin to release some of its soldiers, then we are talking about highly qualified soldiers who are difficult to replace, primarily pilots. It takes a long time to train them, and such personnel losses cannot be compensated quickly. Or we are talking about conditional "staff members", that is, those who are wanted.

A significant part of Russian prisoners of war, mobilized, regular troops or volunteers, in other words, mercenaries from various private mercenary armies, are consumables. The Kremlin does not care if they are killed or captured. And there is no consolidated demand of the Russian population for the return of these people," said Polozov.

 

"Political Question"

The lawyer noted that holding civilian hostages is a war crime. Their release is purely a political issue.

"Even before the invasion, the issue of Ukrainian political prisoners, primarily from the territory of the occupied Crimea, of which there were at least 200 at the time, was still not resolved. And, in principle, the last exchange, which specifically concerned Ukrainian political prisoners, took place more than four years ago, in 2019, when Ukrainian military sailors, Oleg Sentsov and a number of other Ukrainian political prisoners were exchanged," Polozov reminded.

According to him, currently the number of captured Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories has increased many times. Their status, whether they are accused or already convicted, generally does not affect the possibility of their return home, according to the lawyer: "The main issue is that there is no political will in the Kremlin."

 

What can trigger exchanges?

 

The renewal of the exchange process between the Russian Federation and Ukraine is possible only if it is possible to put pressure on the Russian authorities, according to Polozov.

"This is a very difficult question, because the decision to renew the exchange procedure was primarily a decision made at the political level. And in conditions where Russia is effectively isolated from the outside world, when there are no real levers of pressure on the Russian government, well, mostly, who will persuade Putin to do it? Who can do that? Who has such a resource to force the Russian authorities to return to the negotiation process," emphasizes the lawyer.

If we talk about some effective levers that can be used at this stage, they can be some humanitarian initiatives that can come from international organizations, such as, for example, the International Committee of the Red Cross, says Polozov.

"Or it is some religious organizations, the Pope, for example, who is supposed to meet with Patriarch Kirill. I hope that this issue will be discussed at this meeting, including the continuation of exchanges", added the lawyer.

Ukraine has already formed "mixed medical commissions" for the exchange of prisoners, the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine reported after a meeting of government representatives with the families of the defenders of Snake Island.

The office also emphasized the fact that, "unfortunately, the activity of Ukrainian authorities and departments regarding the return of defenders to their homes is met with Russia's reluctance to return even its own citizens."

On November 27, a meeting was held at the Coordination Headquarters with representatives of the families of the missing and captured soldiers of the 92nd Separate Mechanized Brigade Kosh, commanded by Ivan Sirko. It was about the mechanisms of finding the bodies of fallen soldiers in safe locations, evacuation and further identification, ways of notifying relatives in cases of matching DNA markers.