Soul separated from body. Story of a marine who lost his speech in captivity

Later he told his mother that it felt as if his soul was somewhere separate from him, that he was looking through glass, that his hands were somewhere, and there was a plate next to them, and he couldn't lift his hands...

“He recognized my face and voice only after three days. But the emotional recognition happened on the fourth day — he burst into tears and clung to me like a child to his mother. That morning, the psychiatrist said that in order for Yura to speak, he would have to spend at least a year in a psychiatric hospital. But Yura started talking seven hours later. And he began to recover very quickly,” says Milana, Yurii's mother.

I came to see Yurii on the seventh day after the exchange. He not only talked, but expressed himself in the refined language of a philologist.

He refused to answer many questions. He also resolutely stopped any attempts by his mother to look too deeply into his soul. It was not yet time. He has just begun to return to warmth and love from Russian hatred and cold.

To get Yurii out of captivity, Milana organized pickets and press conferences, stormed the Verkhovna Rada and the Ministry of Veterans Affairs. She fought for her son even when her closest people told her: “You're chasing ghosts, stop, you have three other children besides Yurko, think about them”.

Now Yurko is safe, and the Ministry of Veterans Affairs invites Milana to work as a person who knows how to search for prisoners and rehabilitate them.

Son, where are you?

The father is a programmer and the mother is a rehabilitation therapist. Their son studied Chinese with zeal and was a student at the Kyiv National Linguistic University. After his second year, Yurii decided to fulfill his military service.

He was recruited into the Marines. It was in the fall of 2021. Two weeks before the full-scale war, he signed a contract with his brigade. Then he served in Mariupol, took part in the battles at the Illicha plant, and was captured by the Russians.

Yura's mother saw his surname as a prisoner of war on a Russian website on April 18, 2022. When she found out that the guys from the 36th Brigade were in the Olenivka colony, more than 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in a terrorist attack there.

Through the Russians, Milana found out that her son was not killed or wounded. But has he ever been in Olenivka? Only in December 2022 the mother was able to find out Yurii's exact location — Ryazhsk Detention Center No. 2 in the Ryazan region.

“On a Russian website, I saw Yurko's photo. His face was like when he was a child, when he was being bullied. And I realized that he was very hurt. And another telling detail: Yurko's hands in the photo were terribly dirty. In pre-war life, it was simply impossible to imagine my son with such hands,” says Milana.

Yurii's photo was on a green background. His mother tracked down the relatives of other prisoners who were also photographed with the same background. Together, they found out that the prisoners were photographed against a green background in Ryazhsk. But was it the only place?

In January 2023, a Russian channel published a video with prisoners, including Yurko. With the help of this video, it was possible to establish for sure that Milana’s son was in Ryazhsk. But two weeks later, she received information that he and other prisoners had been taken from there in an unknown direction.

On January 31, 2024, a man returned from captivity and told Milana that he had shared a cell with Yurko. But Mykola did not know where the colony where they were held was located. It was a place called Polyana...

“Mykola told me how much time it took them to get from Ryazhsk by bus. We calculated how far the bus could travel in that time. Using a compass, we outlined the appropriate radius on the map and identified the colonies that were within this radius. One of them was in the village of Udarnoe in the Zubova Polyana district of Mordovia. I realized that Polyana was about it. That my son was there,” recalls Milana Viktorivna.

Beyond humanity

According to Milana, in the video from Ryazhsk, Yurko behaved absolutely adequately: “He did not cry, did not stutter. He clearly and calmly identified himself and the brigade number. He said: ‘I serve in the 36th Brigade’, not ‘I served’, and I liked that. I saw that he was in a normal state and calmed down for a while.”

The woman heard Mykola's story about Yurii's life in captivity a year after the video. His mother learned that her son never fought with anyone for food, never ratted anyone out. That he helped sick guys. That at first he did not follow the commands of the warders, for which he was beaten a lot. So he chose another way of resistance: to remain silent. The guards could not get anything from him. But a few months later, one of the prisoners told the Russians that Yurko was actually talking to his own people. And then they took him out of the cell and did something that made him really unable to speak. This happened in June 2023.

Milana was stunned by what she heard from Mykola: “It was a story of severe physical violence. About beatings and mockery. About atanding for 16 hours a day, which causes ulcers on the legs. About how the Russians first beat you to create a bruise, then hit you on this bruise, and the wound rots.”

Russians have a wide range of physical abuse. I see Yura drinking tea now — he drinks boiling water because in captivity they forced him to eat hot food in two minutes. I asked him about it, and his face twitched and he said ‘Don’t ask about food’.Milana, mother of Yurii Hulchuk

After talking to Mykola, Milana even regretted learning such details of her son's captivity. How can you live with this knowledge?

“I cried all the way home. At home, I screamed and beat on the walls. My child faced such evil!” recalls Milana.

The first day Yurko spoke in Kyiv, he said that what bothered him the most in captivity was how some of his borthers-in-arms lost their humanity. He also admitted that his mother's words, which he had heard since childhood, helped him a lot: you can't steal, you can't snitch, you can't be mean.

It was also very difficult to endure absolute disorientation in time, space, and events.

“I didn't know where I was, what would happen to me the next minute. How are my parents? How is my country? Sometimes I thought that the war might end, and we wouldn't know anything about it. Or that the Third World War had started, but we were not told. It's very difficult to keep track of time there and know what day it is, what date it is. This was the most unpleasant. I'm not sure that the dates I thought were my birthdays were my birthdays indeed. Every day is similar to the previous and the next. But I tried to cheer up,” says Yurii.

“How can you control your emotions and thoughts in such a situation?” I ask him.

“Perhaps such situations help us learn to control ourselves,” he says.

He admits that his main emotion in captivity was a feeling of regret — he reproached himself for not paying enough attention and giving enough warmth to his family. His grandparents lived almost next door, and he often did not find time for them...

Sanitary corridor for seriously ill prisoners

Back in April 2022, Milana wrote a statement that her son had gone missing, took a DNA test, contacted the The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War began its work in March 2022 in accordance with CMU Resolution No. 257.Coordination Headquarters and the International Red Cross, and even wrote to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

“I was waiting for at least some information about my son from the official authorities. But they could not tell me anything. The last straw was a meeting with the leadership of the 36th Brigade in June 2024. A psychologist, a financier, and a social worker came, and not a single word about when Yura and the other guys would be exchanged. And Mykola said that Yurko was holding on thanks to his character, and I realized that he would not last long,” says Milana.

The woman appealed to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights and a similar official in Russia, asking for a sanitary corridor to be created for seriously ill prisoners from the 36th Brigade, but she was ignored. Then she proposed to the Verkhovna Rada to introduce the concept of a “prisoner of long term imprisonment” because, according to her, these people suffer the most trauma.

“A long period is more than two years. Starvation during such a period causes severe degeneration, which is followed by death. At the same time, our prisoners are beaten, forced to stand all day, and their lymph is constantly oozing from the wounds on their swollen legs! I started writing about this to the Verkhovna Rada, the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, and the Coordination Center. And then I turned to the A human rights organisation founded in September 2016 by journalists Mariia Tomak and Olha Reshetylova.Media Initiative for Human Rights,” says Milana.

MIHR helped her to hold a press conference and organize a picket outside the Verkhovna Rada.

“Since June 20 this year, I have been picketing for 6-7 hours. It was a hot summer, I suffered two heat strokes, but I would rest and go again. From time to time I was joined by relatives of other prisoners from the 36th Brigade, sometimes we gathered up to 100 people. We printed photos of those who had died in captivity, photos of wounds and bruises with which Ukrainians returned from captivity.

At first, we were ignored, but later I was invited to the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, and then I submitted my proposals to the The Temporary Investigative Commission of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to investigate possible violations of Ukrainian legislation in the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, other military formations established in accordance with the laws of Ukraine, and special purpose law enforcement agencies whose positions are filled by military personnel.Temporary Investigative Commission. After that many of the guys whose relatives supported my picket were returned from captivity,” says Milana.

On September 14, she was told to go to Chernihiv, where Yurii and other prisoners from the colony in Mordovia were to be brought to the hospital. The caller later admitted that she would always remember how Milana screamed…

Family members, who thought that Milana was chasing ghosts, had to apologize.

I do not want to forget the captivity

“Before captivity, my parents and I often went for walks and to cafes. For me, these are childhood memories, where warmth and light come from. My father's mentoring, my mother's care. I often imagined that my parents and I would go to a cafe again and talk about some pleasant, calm topics. But I was so afraid of being deceived by the Russians that even after crossing the border I forbade myself to think about that moment,” Yurii admits.

The Russians like to mock prisoners in this way: they transport them from one colony to another, but say they are taking them for an exchange. Yurii had experienced this situation several times, so he no longer believed the words about the exchange.

“They put black bags on our heads and took us, as it turned out, to the airport. During the flight, we sat with the bags on our heads. Then the bus came again. And the convoy told us about the exchange. And I did not believe it. I was preparing for the worst. Suddenly, the command was given to take off the bags, and we were given Russian rations. I got beef with beans and potatoes. This, to be honest, was even more alarming. Because the hand that just beat you with a wooden stick put the stick away and gave you something to eat. I kept thinking, what's the trap?

We ate, the command was to put on the bags. And after a while, a new command: to take the bags off and hand them over to the guards. They told us again about the exchange, that we were being taken through Belarus and that the Belarusians would feed us. Indeed, Belarusians appeared with food packages. I was even more surprised. I couldn't even eat this food. After all these years of eating thin soup we got chocolate and condensed milk. For days, months, years, you dream about them, see them in your dreams when you sleep. And then you get it. At that time, I told myself that something was happening that I didn't understand, and it worried me, but it wasn't that bad, everything was fine,” Yurko shares his memories.

Even when he saw the Russian prisoners at the border, for whom Ukrainians were being exchanged, he had the feeling that it was some kind of dream or some kind of mind trick. An ambulance took him from the border to Chernihiv.

The trip was very stressful and long, it disoriented me. Everything that was happening around me was a kind of whirlwind of images, pictures, and this only increased the feeling of illusion, of a dream. I realized that my mother was next to me, not some other woman, but I wasn't completely sure whether she was from the real world or from my fantasies. Even in my first days in Kyiv, I thought I was dreaming. Reality was gradually emerging.Yurii Hulchuk, soldier returned from Russian captivity

Yurii is now 23 years old. After the intensive care unit in neurology department, there will be a rehabilitation center, paperwork, and meetings with those he misses. The guy does not rule out that he will return to the university. He wants to learn Chinese again and travel.

“Do you want to forget the captivity?” I ask him.

“Absolutely not. Why should I forget it? I learned valuable lessons from the captivity. For example, that you have to be very careful not only about what you say, but also about what you think,” he says.

Meanwhile, Milana received a letter of appreciation from the Coordination Center for her efforts in searching for the prisoners. Like Yurii, his mom is coming to terms with the new reality: “Now I wake up thinking that Yura is home! I can't put this feeling into words.”