“Give me your word that you will help bring my son back from captivity.” What it's like to be Women of Steel
It is freezing on the Maidan. Hundreds of people have gathered in the center of the city to rally for the release of their relatives from captivity. The organizer of the rally, Nataliia Zarytska, is being pulled by journalists. Her husband Bohdan approaches her and hugs her, saying: “You're all blue, you're cold.” Nataliia replies: “Just a moment. I have another interview.” Then he turns to the reporters: “Just for a little while, okay? Just three questions.”
Nataliia and Bohdan Zarytski. He is an Azovstal defender who went through the hell of enemy captivity. She went through the hell of six months of suspense. It was the absence of news about her husband that prompted her to found Women of Steel, a non-governmental organization that protects the rights of prisoners of war and missing persons.
Are these women steely or ordinary? How did they manage to unite and make the slogan “FREE AZOV” resound throughout the world? How did Nataliia lose sleep, wait for her beloved husband, but not recognize him at first? And how together they are now doing everything to free thousands more military and civilians who are still in the dungeons of Russian prisons — find out in hromadske's story.
He texted: “Do not search for me in captivity”
Nataliia's struggle began in early May 2022. Back then, her 9-year-old son Sashko drew a poster in the cellar with a big red heart and the words: “Save Mariupol”. She took it to the Maidan with her. At a time when actions for Mariupol were spreading across Europe, in Kyiv it was still a cry in the wilderness.
But after posting a photo of her son with the poster on social media, Nataliia began to receive requests from other relatives of Mariupol's defenders. Soon a small team was formed. Then came the first briefings. Government support. A flight to Istanbul.
“We literally made the following team in one evening: the wife of a border guard, the wife of a marine, the mother of an Azov soldier, and me, the wife of an Azov soldier. We flew to Turkey. We had to act. We needed leverage. Because dozens of people were dying from the bombs there every day…” says Nataliia.
The news of the order for Azovstal's defenders to surrender reached her in Ankara.
“The girls and I were very worried. Some guys started calling some of them. But mine did not call or text.
For my Bohdan, captivity was not an option at all. He texted: ‘This is not my way at all, don't even search for me in captivity, don't search for me in the lists. This will not happen.’”
But soldiers live by orders, and the senior soldier of the Azov regiment, 31-year-old Bohdan Zarytskyi, who spent 82 days under siege at Azovstal, had to obey them.
Nataliia realized that only struggle would help her maintain her sanity. On June 1, 2022, Women of Steel officially emerged from the spontaneously formed association.
She did not recognize her husband: he wearing 7 sizes too small slippers, minus 43 kg
When Bohdan walked into the McDonald's where we were drinking tea and warming up after a two-hour rally on the Maidan, everything around him seemed to fade. Looking at him fascinated, Nataliia continued:
“He even walks like a giant through this McDonald's. It's like an airplane that was forced to travel by road. Look at him: he's so burly, he just walked down this corridor. You can tell he's a military man from three kilometers away.”
On September 21 last year, she could not recognize her husband. After five months of captivity, the almost two-meter-tall, muscular man had lost 43 kilograms. The woman recalls how at the exchange point in Chernihiv region, she literally stared at everyone who got off the bus. Bohdan was almost the last to get off.
“And when he came out, I just didn't recognize him… You know, he has such a wide foot — size 44.5. And he was wearing size 37 slippers. This is what the Russians gave him. He was wearing a Metinvest T-shirt that he had worn during the defense of Azovstal, a torn sweatshirt with a ‘killer Leon’ on it, and underpants.
The very first thing he said to me was: ‘Baby, I love you. Here I am. I held on… You will not be ashamed of me. I did my job’”.
In the line for humanitarian aid, where they gave out the things he needed for the first time, Bohdan was asked his size. “XXL,” he answered out of habit. People looked at him in surprise: “What XXL? You are an M.” Instead of 113 kg, he barely weighed 70.
“When he was changing clothes, a piece of plastic fell out of his pocket. I asked him what it was, did you get caught on something? And he said: ‘What are you talking about, this is my spoon from captivity!’ It was just a piece of a broken plastic spoon.”
It has become more difficult, there are almost no exchanges
I ask Nataliia if, after a year and a half of the organization's work, everything is on track. What has become easier and what has become more difficult?
“In some ways, it has become easier. Because when we created the organization, there were no algorithms at all. What if your relative is a soldier and went missing under special circumstances or was captured? What do you do if he died and you even know the place, but you have no physical access to the body? What should you do?
Today, we already have these clear algorithms: where to go, how to act, and what documents you need to get. There are support groups,” says Nataliia.
Her organization provides information, legal, and, if necessary, psychological assistance to the families.
For example, the current algorithm of actions if a relative is captured is as follows. First of all, you need to notify the SBU Joint Center, the National Police, the National Information Bureau, and the International Committee of the Red Cross by filling out an application. You should file a report of a missing or captured person, write it to the investigator at the nearest police station, and get an extract from the Unified Register of Pre-trial Decisions. You should constantly communicate with the Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War and then monitor groups where photos from captivity are posted.
“There are such groups, there are Russian groups. Because no investigator, no program, or artificial intelligence can track a person today by special signs and traits as well as the loving eye of a mother or wife can. And we also share this information.
A community of those who have been released from captivity has been created, and they provide information to relatives promptly: with whom they were held captive, whom they saw, and what they heard. This is also effective. Even if we managed to get information about only one person, that he was alive at the time, it is already a relief for the mother, wife, daughter, son, father… For everyone.”
Bohdan is actively involved in this work.
“Bohdan inspires, he gives meaning, he is our sieve through which we sift everything so that we do not harm anyone. For example, I ask him if I speak out about this type of torture, it will definitely hurt, right? He says: ‘Yes, baby. It's better to remove this, it's better to say this, or let's consult with the guys’.”
Nataliia says that it has become more difficult because the process of prisoner exchange has virtually stopped. You have to balance the importance of publicity with the fact that “exchanges love silence”.
“When there are no exchanges, we need to find new meanings, what to do? Because against the backdrop of the acute situation at the front, the issue of prisoners of war is objectively falling out of orbit. But we are constantly returning it to this orbit because we are convinced that only with the will can you gain destiny.”
“You can't feed people who have just been released from captivity borscht with sour cream and stewed potatoes with meat!”
Women of Steel also raised the topic of rehabilitation. Their initiative resulted in a whole concept, which was later transformed into a government decree. Nataliia Zarytska hopes that it will be adopted soon. After all, the fight with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance has been going on for nine months.
“In fact, everything is complicated. We are trying to convey that those who have returned from captivity cannot be treated using general approaches and protocols. And the food in hospitals is not adapted at all. You cannot feed a person who has been starving for a year with borscht with sour cream, stewed potatoes with meat, and sandwiches with salami! It's a stomach stopper.”
Nataliia knows what she is talking about. When prisoners develop a fierce appetite after captivity and start to “eat away” at their food, this is also a problem. Losing and gaining 40-60 kg in six months is an incredible crisis for the body. This can result in thrombosis because the blood thickens. Someone can eat a whole cake overnight. Bohdan set a record — he ate a two-kilogram cake in a day and a half.
“Well, why let a good thing go to waste,” Bohdan adds quietly, smiling. Natalka smiles back but continues with a sad look in her eyes.
"This is a disaster. Bohdan has just been diagnosed with diabetes. He is 32 years old, but malnutrition in the trenches, hunger at Azovstal, hunger in captivity, torture… We have a seemingly healthy man with huge problems inside. And his brothers-in-arms have even worse problems.”
Nataliia shows me a photo of Ivan, a marine who was Bohdan's brother-in-arms and closest friend, before and after his capture. He was released shortly after Bohdan. However, no matter how hard he looked at the video from the exchange, trying to find his friend, he never recognized him. Later, when he facetimed him, he would be stunned and say: “Natalka, I saw this man, but I didn't think it was Ivan. I only recognized him by his voice.”
“In captivity, Ivan stood for 16 hours every day for 9 months. His feet lost 42 percent of their sensitivity. And how to treat this? Our healthcare system does not know yet. Therefore, when we see these problems, we emphasize them and say: ‘Dear friends, naphthyzine, for example, does not work in the treatment of sinusitis or something similar to sinusitis after sitting in a Donetsk basement’.”
We don't know all the health consequences of captivity yet, Nataliia adds. She and Bohdan, for example, do not have children together yet, but they hope they will. But for now, due to possible genetic problems, doctors do not advise them to get pregnant. Not until the metabolism is restored.
“More than a year has passed, but the hormones are still unbalanced — there is a risk that our children will inherit genetic defects. The same consequences of total hunger can lead to the fact that a child may later inherit obesity. Geneticists are talking about this and sounding the alarm.
We organized a similar analysis for a dozen more of his brothers, and all of them have significant metabolic disorders. That's why we say that this is also a kind of genocide.”
Conscious cappuccino
We're getting off-topic. Bohdan ordered food and drinks for everyone. One of the lidded cups is for me. I ask what it is. Cappuccino.
Cappuccino is Bohdan's favorite coffee drink. Natalka remembers him drinking a cappuccino shortly after his return, while her friend looked at him with fascinated eyes:
“Natalka, have you seen how he drinks coffee? He does it knowing WHAT he is doing. He savors every sip, he knows the value of this flavor, the value of this sip.”
“At home, I also started to pay attention to how he ate. Even when there were crumbs of bread left over, he couldn't just brush them off and throw them away. He gathered them in his palm and fed them to the pigeons. We eat every last crumb. With the realization that our defenders are still sitting there and do not have enough food… Stale rice in Olenivka was a great joy,” Nataliia says.
“In Olenivka, we had it once in the whole time, and it was considered cool,” Bohdan adds. “There were usually three types of porridge: wheat, pearl barley, and the so-called ‘arnautka’. And soup or borsch. That's what it was called. It was just colored water. Every day, someone could not stand it and just fell from hunger.”
“Natalka, give me your word that you will help me get my son back” is like signing in blood
During the conversation, Nataliia mentioned that the stories of the servicemen’s relatives who come to her sometimes take away her sleep. I asked her which stories touched her the most. And she immediately tells me about the mother of the man who died in the Olenivka barracks, a guy with the call sign “Zhym”, Nataliia Pashniuk-Pashnieva. Here is a direct speech.
“She was told twice that her son died at Azovstal. She didn't believe it, and neither did I because I was told the same thing about Bohdan. And then she showed me a video of our men leaving Azovstal and said: ‘Nataliia, look, this is definitely my Zhenia!’ In the video, a small but wiry soldier is dragging a big wounded guy. And I said: ‘Ms. Nataliia, this is definitely your Zhenya’.”
“Then there was the cruel cynical execution of prisoners in Olenivka. When I saw the name Pashniuk-Pashniev in the unofficial lists of the dead, I did not believe it and for a long time, I wanted to hope that these lists were false. And then 7 months passed… And the woman was able to bury her son's hand. The match was confirmed by a DNA test, but she recognized it even without it: when she saw this knuckle and the fingers were like this, the thumb was clenched... She said, I sleep like this too, and I put my fist under my head like this. Zhenia did the same.”
“For me, this story just runs like a red thread. You know, sometimes there are moments when you want to give up and that's it. But then you think: no, there is Ms. Nataliia somewhere… And this unity at the level of relatives is important.”
Heartwarming stories with a happy ending do not let you give up.
“On the day Bohdan was exchanged, we were driving from the office to the Coordination Headquarters late at night. It was on the quay. Nelia Shestun from our team said: ‘Nataliia, give me your word that you will help me get my son back and that you will fight until he returns.’ And, you know, giving this word is like signing in blood. But I said: ‘Nelia, I will be with you until Mykyta is returned.”
“Mykyta came back. It was the New Year. And it was the coolest New Year's gift for me. It was like a mountain off my shoulders. The word was kept.”
Women of Steel: “We are, in fact, just ordinary women”
I will fight to the end, but I am a living person, says Nataliia Zarytska.
“Even though we position ourselves as women of steel, we are, in fact, ordinary women. I am an ordinary wife of an ordinary senior soldier, who also has moments of burnout and peak outbursts when you are ‘on the wave’ and can give birth to a new meaning. It happens on a sinusoid, but somehow this struggle is constant. Sometimes quieter, sometimes louder. But until the end.”
In her farewell, she asks the women to hold on and do their best not to lose hope and to save themselves.
“Unfortunately, Bohdan's mother died while he was in captivity. She could not stand it. When he returned, he was… to say he was upset is an understatement. She was 60. So I would ask everyone to hold on. It may happen that the defender will be returned, and you will not be there… and the Russians will actually manage to take everything from us. So you have to hold on.
I will say this: only love saves. Only this feeling can bring you out of the darkness. When you are desperate, just remember how much you love this person, this country, and yourself in this country. Only by protecting this bright feeling can you overcome the darkness.”
This material was prepared as part of hromadske's special project “With a Common Wave”. To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we are talking about 10 initiatives that have influenced the development of Ukrainian society and changed people's lives.