"Missing, probably in captivity". The story of a 22-year-old commander of an anti-aircraft artillery platoon

“Deleted account” — this is how Denys Kharchenko’s number is recently displayed in the messenger of his fiancée Kateryna. The social network deleted Denys' account because he had not logged in for more than six months. Since mid-April, the guy has been in Russian captivity, from where he managed to call his family for the first time only two months ago.

Denys is a marine of the 36th Brigade, who decided to become a military man after the Revolution of Dignity and continue the tradition of his family. Less than a year after graduating from the Kharkiv National Air Force University, Denys found himself at the front line in Mariupol. And a few months after the beginning of the full-scale war, he was captured by the Russians.

His story is told by his fiancée Kateryna and his mother Tetiana.

A pilot from a military family

Summer of 2015, the war in Donbas has been going on for more than a year. 15-year-old Denys Kharchenko and his mother Tetiana came to Chernihiv Military Lyceum to apply for admission.

“We were late. The admission campaign was already over and applicants were preparing to take entrance exams. Maybe I was happy inside because I knew the fate of my father-in-law, a military man - their constant moves, changes of garrisons. But Denys was persistent, and his father supported him strongly: there are four generations of military men in his family.”

At that moment, the head of the lyceum was walking down the corridor where Denys and Tetiana were standing. He asked what happened, invited them to the office, and asked the boy several questions on mathematics and logic.

“He really liked Denys's answers, his motivation. Therefore, he gave a written order to accept the documents.”

Denys passed the exams, took fourth place in the ranking among the entrants, and started his studies in September. He came home only on Sunday, the only day off. Tetiana and her husband absorbed every word of their son about study and service, about his views and position.

“If he says it's white or black, it is so. He had no gray. He is very honest. I never questioned his actions, he spoke openly about everything. He applied this in his adult life with his subordinates. He told everything as it was”.

So two years passed, and Denys went to Kharkiv to enter the National Air Force University.

“Becoming a pilot was his dream. So we went to apply together again. In addition to the usual exams, he had to pass a physical endurance test and a lot of medical examinations. Denys passed everything and entered the flight faculty”.

Denys began coming home to Chernihiv even less often. But sometimes his parents visited him and even managed to see their son's first flights.

“He was one of the best student pilots”

In January 2019, a third-year student Denys met a medical student Kateryna. It was then that he was transferred to the Faculty of Air Defense due to health problems.

“I know that they did not want to let him go. He was one of the best student pilots,” Kateryna says.

Six months later, the couple began to date, but they saw each other infrequently — Denys was preparing for graduation, and he was practicing at the 93rd Independent Kholodnyi Yar Mechanized Brigade.

“There were many older people there, Denys was very worried about it. But later he told me that he taught many people to use tablets. He even conducted training for them in the evenings”.

Denys and Kateryna planned that after graduation, he would join the Kholodnyi Yar Brigade and they would live together in Kharkiv. However, a month before graduation, the guy was sent to Mykolaiv to the 36th Marine Brigade.

“Denys' commander was very angry. He was shouting: how did it happen that he ended up in the Marines? A new parade uniform was sewed for him to graduate, and documents were prepared. And no one understood how it happened.”

“Even the air was heavy then”

Denys moved to serve in Mykolaiv and at the age of 21 became the commander of an anti-aircraft artillery platoon, the youngest among them all.

“At first, he was not taken seriously, even by his personnel. There were people 40-50 years old who fought in the ATO zone. They looked at Denys like a little boy. In about a month he managed to make them respect him. I know that for some time he performed the duties of a company commander,” says Kateryna.

From Mykolaiv, Denys and his comrades-in-arms went to practice in Urzuf, on Zmiinyi Island. Later he was transferred to Mariupol. He and Kateryna celebrated the New Year 2022 there. Despite Denys's request to let him go to Chernihiv for the holidays, he was refused because of the “turbulent situation”.

In January, Denys went on vacation with Kateryna to his parents. The last time they saw each other was at the Kyiv railway station. Katia was going to Kharkiv, and Denys was going to Mariupol.

“When we saw Katia off and I got on the train to say goodbye to Denys, he told me to go home, not to wait for the departure. I hugged him. I remember the smell of his body, and how I held his back. Even then I had a feeling in my soul as if I was seeing my child off to war. I did not show him this and did not allow myself to be weak in front of him. Even now I do not cry at all”.

Tetiana did not keep her promise — she did not go home as Denys asked. She went around the corner, looked at the train, saw her son in the window, and waited until it left.

“Plus” means she is alive.

On February 24, Tetiana woke up to powerful explosions: near their house in Chernihiv there is a military headquarters, which the Russians immediately attacked. On the advice of Denys, the woman and her 12-year-old daughter moved to relatives in the village of Ivanivka, 15 kilometers from Chernihiv. A week later, the Russians came there.

“When they entered the village, they fired from a tank at every house on the way. They began to carry out clearing, and every day they came to the house where we lived.

However, when the Russians began to set up their headquarters in our neighborhood, I went to ask the commander to let us out — my cousin was with a one-month-old baby.”

The woman had no contact with Denys. Only occasionally she managed to catch a mobile signal in the field at a certain point and send her husband, who was working abroad at the time, a plus sign — it meant that she is alive.

“I dressed in black on purpose and went to the field late at night. Once I heard a machine gun burst, I fell into a pit and lay there for a long time, afraid to get up”.

In late March, the Ukrainian military liberated the village. During the days of occupation, Tetiana buried her aunt (she did not have time to hide in the cellar during the shelling) and her cousin's husband — he was shot by the Russians, and the house where he lived with his family was burned.

“Tell him that I love him very much”

Denys was in the Mariupol direction at that time. He rarely got in touch with Kateryna and mostly texted her. On March 5, the couple managed to talk for two hours.

“I heard volleys in the receiver, warnings of missile strikes, alarm. I did not ask him much. We talked more about how we would go to the Carpathians, go hiking, and how Denys would cook field porridge. He also said that his talisman bracelet, which I gave him, was cracked. This thing was very important to me, my mother brought it to me from church, and I gave it to Denys on all important events. For exams, when he went to Mykolaiv. It was also with him in Mariupol,” says Kateryna.

When there was no contact with Denys for several days, the girl still found doctors in military hospitals, Denys's brothers-in-arms, and relatives of the military who could confirm that the guy was alive. Once she even managed to get in touch with the brigade commander.

“He's alive. Shall I tell him something?” Kateryna heard on the phone.

“Tell him that I love him very much”.

A few days later, the girl received a call back: “The information has been passed on: ‘Me too’”.

“On April 17, at 18:00, I saw Denys on the news on the Russia-1 channel”

In early April, Tetiana received a call from her friends in Russia who said they had seen Denys on TV news. The woman did not believe it but still started monitoring Russian channels.

“On April 17, at 18:00, I saw Denys on the news on the Russia-1 channel. I watched this story a million times. I watched how he was led, and how he walked, whether he was injured. I listened to his every word. He said that there are problems with water, and food, but, they say, it concerns not only them but also the rest of the people who live there. From these words I understood that he is most likely in the ‘DPR’,” says Tetiana.

Later, Denys' father found a detailed interview of his son on YouTube, where he told how he was captured. The video indicated the location — Donetsk.

“In the morning of April 12, we learned that our 36th brigade tried to leave Mariupol. This operation was planned a week before but failed several times. At that time there were 10 people under my command. I decided that we also needed to leave. We headed along the railway towards the next village after Mariupol,” Denys says in the video.

“On the way, we came across a Russian post. We went to a forest plantation. There were Russian artillery positions nearby. We stayed there for a day. Then we went to a village in Mariupol RaionPryovrazhne, to a village in Mariupol RaionKasianivka, — there we again hid in a forest plantation. We reached the river. I understood that crossing it was not an option. I saw bodies on the bank, a burnt field. A mortar was used here. It also made no sense to go along the river towards Kreminna, there was a forest plantation there.

We waited for two days, and then just before dawn, when it was as dark as possible, we went through the forest plantation to Kreminna. I realized that the information we were given the day before about our and the enemy's positions was false. Russians were already where our military should have been. We were running out of ammunition, so we decided to surrender. There was too much risk for the lives of the personnel.

We went to a woman's house. I gave her four thousand hryvnias to feed us. And so we waited until we were handed over to the commandant's office. This same woman was to tell the Russians about us”.

One day, Denys' subordinate was sitting on the windowsill and saw a a Russian armored vehicleTigr drive up to the house. Denys ordered everyone to go to the back room and stay as far away from the windows as possible.

“When the house was surrounded, we were told to come out and surrender. I was the first to come out with my hands raised. But all my men were still armed. Then I gave a signal to them to come out. That's how we ended up in captivity.”

“Home is under Ukraine’s control”

One morning in early September, Denys called Tetiana from captivity.

“From the first notes, I heard that it was his voice. He asked what was happening at home. I understood what he wanted to ask because they have very limited information there. I answered him: home is under Ukraine’s control, everything is fine.”

A few days later Denys also called Kateryna.

“He asked what I was doing, where we were, how we were doing. I told him everything, tried to give him strength with my words”.

But these calls do not indicate anything, the women say. They still have no official confirmation from the Russian side that Denys is really being held captive.

“The answer from the military unit where the man served is that he is missing, probably in captivity,” says Kateryna.

After 215 Ukrainians were released from Russian captivity on September 21, the girl got in touch with Sviatoslav Yermonov. He said that he knew Denys, saw him in Olenivka and that he had already been transported to Russia.

“Even Denys's 82-year-old grandfather, a former Soviet soldier, who inspired him to become a military, filed statements to the police and the Security Service of Ukraine on his behalf. In spring he did not leave Chernihiv, did not go down to the shelter, he only said: ‘How will I hide when my grandson is fighting on the front line?’”