Love, captivity, slavery and love again

He closes his eyes. So tightly that it hurts. But tears still spill out, no matter how hard you try to hold them back. He squeezes his wife in a tight hug. He pokes his nose somewhere in the dimple on her collarbone. A bouquet of blue, yellow, red, and white roses is sandwiched between them. The thorns dig painfully into the skin, but no one feels them.

She looks at him as if he were God. I see only one of her eyes, but there is an ocean of love in it.

This is a photo of the first meeting of 50-year-old couple Artur and Olena Yahupov after more than a year of separation. He was in the Armed Forces, she was in prison and captivity. He — because he was defending his homeland, she — because she was his wife. They got to stay together for five days in two stints. Artur was called to his place of service, Olena saw him off, and then she was able to talk to hromadske.

"That's it, your wife is gone, she was executed"

Artur and Olena from Kamyanka-Dniprovska in Zaporizhzhya Oblast have known each other since they were 16 years old. He fell in love. For the first time. And she refused. She said she was into her studies and career. In fact, she didn't like him: he was small, nondescript, not worthy of attention. Years passed. They both got married, had three children, and divorced. And then, 27 years later, they got together and got married. They became the Yahupov family. After decades yearning for it, Artur finally received requited love from his first love, whom he could never extricate from his heart. Olena loved him with the fervency and devotion only a first love can command. Her ardent affection at last matched the passion he had harbored for so long.

They lived happily in their city. Olena worked in the state administration, and Artur, as an employee of the State Emergency Service, guarded a nuclear power plant in Enerhodar, 15 km from home. In 2019, they both decided that he would join the Armed Forces to defend Ukraine. When the Russians occupied Kamianka-Dniprovska in March 2022, he was at the front. She was preparing to leave, looking for a driver. But it was too late. In October, she was reported to the commandant's office.

"I know these people. My neighbor Ihor Drachov, whom I always helped with food because he was in need. And my friend Olena Kabanova, whom I employed," Olena laughs sarcastically. "They were paid 10,000 rubles ($110 - ed.) each. But I think they did it not only for the money. They did it out of envy, out of anger. Many people in the city knew that I was a military wife, but they kept silent for months. But these people couldn't."

The "police" came for Olena. She immediately lost contact with her children, who were on government-controlled territory. They had no idea what was going on, while Artur received a call from "good people" in Kamyanka: "That's it, your wife is gone, she was executed."

She was not shot. She was tortured. She was tortured by the FSB. Five or six men rotated. First, they taped her to an office chair and beat her on the head with a two-liter water bottle. They asked where her husband was. "You don't know? Then we'll help you remember!" And they continued: they put a cellophane bag on her head and wrapped tape around her neck. One of the torturers clamped her nose to prevent her from breathing, while the other held her neck. When her body was convulsing, they let her go.

"It was horrible, but I was happy when I fell with the chair. Then I had a couple of seconds to breathe in some air from the bag," Olena recalls.

When the torturers go bored of this type of torture, they strangled her with a wire from an electric kettle. At the same time, they put a gun to her forehead. They played Russian roulette. This went on for hours. The perpetrators were enjoying the violence, and Olena could not think or scream. She just watched. Like a fish thrown ashore, from which life slowly leaks out.

This went on for two days. In the evening, she was thrown into a detention center cell on a bare cement floor. She felt two wounds on her head, but there was no napkin, rag, or anything suitable to wipe the blood.

"After five days, I realized that if I did nothing, I would go crazy. My body told me that I needed to exercise, to move. I started doing sit-ups, push-ups, planks, and later dousing myself with ice water from the tap. My whole being was screaming: survive!" Olena says.

Nine days after her detention, she turned 50. She woke up and congratulated herself.

"I would never have thought that I, a law-abiding citizen, would celebrate my anniversary in solitary confinement. With a tiny barred window very high above the ceiling," Olena is still surprised.

Betrayal by her compatriots: "Serves you right"

The torturers seemed to have forgotten about her. Olena was not taken for interrogation. But for the next four months, she was facing a miserable existence. She begged the guards to let her go home — to fetch at least some underwear and medicine. She had nothing with her.

And these people she knew personally, her fellow countrymen who served the occupation authorities, only laughed: "Serves you right." They did not hide the fact that they had been waiting for Russia all their lives, and now it had finally come true!

Once Olena was taken outside.

"I was told I had to give an interview to the Russian RIA Novosti channel. If I say something wrong, they will shoot me immediately. And if everything went well, they would let me go. They brought me to an old dormitory building. No one had lived there for years. The interview was conducted against its background. They asked me if I knew any pro-Ukrainian bloggers, what I wanted to tell the Ukrainian ‘gangs’ and what I thought about Russia's chances of improving life in the region. I saw this video six months later. The whole conversation was cut to pieces. It turned out to be a confession that I was a fire spotter," she says.

Her captors did not allow Yahupova to go home. She was thrown into a four-person cell in a pre-trial detention center that accommodated 15. Some of these women were prisoners who had been imprisoned for murder, and sometimes for double murder. The prisoners had to lie on the floor, under the table. They were fed with steamed, unseasoned groats, which were thrown into a disposable plate, which Olena had to pick up after someone else. It was the same with other things.

She would literally steal an old sweater or worn-out shoes from those who left the cell. She washed them in cold industrial water from the tap and pulled them on. Somehow she managed to get a useless blanket, which didn’t warm her even in summer. The only warm clothes she had were pajamas and socks, which she had "traded" for her laptop on the first day of detention. The cell was not heated, it was smoky inside and 20°C outside. The prisoners could be brought parcels – this was not forbidden.

However, there was not a single person who agreed to do this for Yahupova. Everyone was afraid. The couple's children eventually found out that their mother was in the detention center. They found a prisoner who had been released from prison for some reason. She promised to help. Yahupova’s children sent the woman 20,000 hryvnias ($542) for a mattress, pillow, blanket, and food. She took pictures of the food in the store and reported back to them. But then she brought Olena just a small pillow for a chair. And that was it.

"In the cell, the relationships were atrocious. No one shared a piece of bread, a napkin or a corner of the mattress. The 'cons' held the power. They were all in favor of Russia. They called me ‘ZSU-backer (Ukrainian Armed Forces - ed.)’ and said that it was not enough to put me in jail for 10-15 years. I should be imprisoned for life. I tried to keep quiet so as not to provoke them," says Olena.

I ask her what helped and kept her going.

"Before I got up, started exercising and dousing myself with cold water, I prayed. I begged for the children – they are without a mother, it's hard for them. I prayed for them to survive. I also begged for not a single hair to fall off my husband's head. I held my wedding ring in my mouth so they wouldn't take it away. I really wanted to return to them," Olena admits.

Where do people disappear to in the occupied territory? 

After four months of imprisonment, on January 19, 2023, Olena Yahupova had a sack put on her head and was taken to Enerhodar. There, the Russians filmed another propaganda video. She was placed between two men, ordered to hold hands and march down the road into the distance. In the video, a voiceover said: "Here are the citizens we are releasing. But we don't know how they will be received in Ukraine." 

"It was done for show. They say we let them go, they disappeared somewhere – Ukraine is to blame. In reality, we were sold into slavery. In Vasylivka, there is this ‘Batman’. My fellow countrymen bring him locals from all over Zaporizhzhya Oblast. The traitors got rid of us, getting our houses, cars and property. And then ‘Batman’ got to exploit our bodies, our health. Rascists pay him so that they don't have to do it themselves. And if we die, it’s nothing to worry about – a new batch of slaves will come in. 

He took our group of 15 men and three women to the village of Verkhnia Krynytsia: ‘It's time to work for the good of the Russian Federation’. And he left us there. And this is the second line of defense. They are standing on the first line," Olena recalls those winter months.

Russian soldiers gave Ukrainians mine probes to clear the fields they had mined themselves. Now they decided that trenches would be located there.

"We have never seen those probes before. But who cares. Clear the mines. And we dug the trenches instead of the soldiers who were guarding us. Sometimes we dug until 4 am. I was lucky, but some of our lot had to bury the Ukrainians who had been shot and were still warm," says Olena.

The prisoners lived in the destroyed houses of local residents who had evacuated. They blocked the broken windows with rags and slept on the floor in rags that gained moisture by morning. Sometimes they managed to light the stove if they found firewood. There was nowhere to get water, so they melted the ice. Soldiers brought them food. It was porridge: pearl barley or wheat. The poor menu seemed better than in the detention center. At least it was warm. Occasionally, the prisoners cooked soup themselves if they found an onion and a few potatoes in a cellar. Olena lost 10 kilograms in prison and captivity.

The Ukrainians were warned: "If you try to touch one of the soldiers and ask for a phone, we will shoot you." Nevertheless, someone took a chance and called their relatives in the occupied territory, and this is how the information reached Moscow.

"And from there, some institutions came to liberate us. The Russians consider Zaporizhzhya Oblast their territory. Civilians cannot be employed to dig trenches. They even consider it a violation. So on March 16, they put us in a minibus and sent us home," Yahupova says.

As soon as she entered her house, 15 minutes later the police were there after a neighbor called them.

"What are you doing here?" the investigator asked.

"I'm at my home."

"Where did we send you?" 

"I dialed the number left for me by the criminal investigation officers from Moscow. They told my countrymen directly: ‘We are not going to cover up your crimes on the spot’. They got in the car and were gone in a minute," concludes Olena.

"I wanted to kiss the ground and the wheels of the minibus to get away from my tormentors"

She began to look for an opportunity to leave: the collaborators hunted her as a witness to their crimes. And finally, in April, she found her way to the free Ukraine. Through the occupied territory, the Baltic states, and Poland.

"First, I had to undergo filtration. After the interrogation in Novoazovsk, I waited for an hour for my documents to be checked. During this time, I turned grayer than in captivity. And when the border guard came out and gave me my passport, I was ready to kiss the ground and the wheels of the minibus to get away from the torturers," the wife of a Ukrainian soldier recalls with horror that day.

How happy she was when she crossed the Ukrainian border after Poland: "I can say whatever I want! Freedom! And there, in captivity, it's scary to even think."

Before the occupation, it took two hours to get from Kamyanka-Dniprovska to Zaporizhzhya, a distance of 130 km. After the occupation, it took several weeks and several thousand kilometers. The man and his wife, who had survived six months of hell, met in Zaporizhzhya. He was crying out loud, she was more reserved. She admits that captivity taught her to cry less, because weakness should not be shown to the enemy.

For 10 days, they attended doctors together and just couldn't stop talking. About their terrible experience, suffering and hope that they would meet. And also about the future.

"My children and friends asked me to stay in Europe for a while, to get treatment. But in Zaporizhzhya, it is morally easier. I consider it my duty to be closer to my husband. If he is released from the hospital once a month, I will go to see him," Olena exhales, admitting, "But generally speaking, I want to go to serve myself. My husband is very much against it. But I have already called the military enlistment office. 

They asked me if I wanted to join Artur. I said: of course, I do. I don't know what I will do there. I can do anything. I am a very motivated person now. And this is the most important thing. This is my country, it is at war. My children live here, my husband lives here. And I have to defend Ukraine and my family myself. It’s no use relying on my neighbors and friends."

* * *

A gray-haired and gray-bearded man in a military uniform keeps his hand on the Bible. Next to him is a woman in a blue and yellow dress and a lace headscarf. Their fingers are intertwined. A priest leans over them, covering their hands with his own. He is praying.

Artur and Olena got married. They had been planning everything and putting it off. And then it was an idea made in heaven after everything they had been through.

The woman smiles awkwardly, her husband does not take his eyes off her. They do have an ocean of love.