Lost anchor: in search of captured commander

Berdiansk. March 2022.

At night, she received a call from an unknown number. Oksana Boychuk was not asleep — she could not since her husband has not been in touch for several days.

"Vladimirovna, Sasha is in captivity. We need to meet" it was the voice of Slavik, colleague of Oleksandr.

The next day Oksana went to the agreed place. To the place where the evacuation buses were taking the locals from Berdiansk. In the human anthill, at first, she did not recognize a serviceman from their unit A 0373 — the division of surface ships. The man was walking in old dirty clothes, in some boots that were not his size. But it was Slavik.

He told her that in Mariupol they were surrounded, the ammunition ran out and the commanders decided to leave in groups. They dropped their military uniforms and changed into civilian clothes.

Slavik and Oleksandr made their way in different groups. In Manhush, a village near Mariupol, Slavik was caught by Russians. From there he was transferred to Dokuchaevsk, to a filtration camp. Slavik told them that he was a taxi driver. They believed his story because it was confirmed by his wife, a Russian woman who had already left for Taganrog by that time.

On March 22, one of the 10 days that Slavik spent in the camp, he saw several people being taken out of the garage, which the Russians had arranged as a place of detention. They were in civilian clothes. But Slavik somehow immediately realized: they were the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And then he saw Oleksandr Boychuk in the line of captives.

Oleksandr Boychuk, captured commander of Henichesk, 2017. Photo: Bohdan Kutiepov / hromadske

Crimea. March 2014.

In March 2014, when little green men appeared in Crimea, the senior midshipman of the harbor minesweeper Henichesk Oleksandr Boychuk put his ship on alert. On March 18, all the warships weighed anchors and left Donuzlav. They thought to break through, but did not have time: the exit was already blocked.

On March 20, the commander of the 5th Brigade of Surface Ships of the Ukrainian Navy, Vitaliy Zvyahintsev, who sided with Russia, ordered all ships to moor to the shore. The commander of the Henichesk disobeyed. He did not let the Russians on board even though three machine guns and automatic easel grenade launchers were pointed at the ships, and the minesweeper was running out of food and fuel.

In the morning he decided to try to escape again. He raised the anchor and went at full speed. The Russians then overslept. But a little later, a boat with special forces caught up with them. They threw noise grenades at the ship and boarded the minesweeper. The sailors fought back with hoses and chains. Boychuk was buttstroked with a rifle, dropped to the ground and felt himself being kicked.

Henichesk was moored at the pier. All crew members went ashore, they were put in a van and taken to Sevastopol. And the beaten commander of the minesweeper Boychuk was left without money and mobile phone. Apparently, they wanted to chasten or humiliate him in such a way. On the way he met an acquaintance, asked for a phone and called his wife Oksana. She sent a car for him. Two days later, the Boychuks, together with their 15-year-old son Viacheslav, left for the territory controlled by Ukraine. It was March 28, 2014.

Oleksandr Boychuk with his wife Oksana
Photo: provided to hromadske

Berdiansk. March 2022.

On March 29, 2022, Oksana Boychuk was timidly walking through Berdiansk with a bag in one hand and a leash with a dog in the other. Deja vu? It had already happened to her! She is again forced to leave the life she has just managed to establish in a new place, again left with one bag in her hand in the face of the unknown. But now she is also without Sasha. Oksana was heading to the van that was supposed to take her to the evacuation bus.

She refused to leave Berdiansk until the last moment. She was waiting there for her Sasha. He was calling from Mariupol during a break between the shelling, whenever he established a connection. He was shouting into the phone: "Leave, otherwise I will kill you!". And she did not obey. But when on March 27 she found out that Sasha was in captivity, nothing else kept her in the city.

It took 12 hours to get to Zaporizhzhya from Azovske instead of three. In the middle of the night they suddenly started to return. The whole bus was shaking. People were screaming: "We don't want to!" It turned out that the Russians had fired at the head of the convoy. Then everyone was asked to get out.

Oksana walked past burnt cars and abandoned belongings. Children's lost or discarded clothes caught her eye. When the driver finally allowed to return to the cabin and they continued the route, she breathed a sign of reliief. In Zaporizhzhya, her eldest son was already waiting for Oksana.

Oleksandr Boychuk, commander of the Henichesk, on the ship, 2017
Photo: Bohdan Kutiepov / hromadske

Sevastopol—Berdiansk. 2014-2022

The arduous journey from Berdiansk was probably even more difficult than the one the two of them had made when they left Crimea. From the crew of Oleksandr Boychuk, 8 out of 11 sailors did not break the oath. They were all settled in Kyiv in the dormitory of the presidential regiment. Then they were sent to Ochakiv. They were settled in a sanatorium.

There Boychuk got the news — go to Crimea, take your Henichesk. On May 20, Russian tugs took the Henichesk minesweeper out of Donuzlav and handed it over to the Ukrainian side. On June 12, Commander Boychuk took his vessel to sea.

In 2019, the Boychuks moved from Ochakiv to Berdiansk — Sasha was promoted. And Oksana, like all her previous life, again took her scarce fortune and followed him. Hoping that this time everything would be different. And they would finally have their own home. But three years later, February 24 happened.

Oleksandr Boychuk with his wife Oksana
Photo: provided to hromadske

Berdiansk. February 24, 2022

On February 24, at 1 a.m., in the military unit A 03797, Oksana and her colleagues packed personal files of the military into white bags, which are usually used to pack sugar. They loaded them into a car and drove to the city center — to the rented apartment of one of the servicewomen.

When they arrived, the explosions began. The women stayed with those bags in the apartment until the morning, and then Oksana decided to take them out of the city. With difficulty she found a car that brought pounds of papers, retelling human destinies, to the far district of Berdiansk, to an inconspicuous yard.

Oksana opened the garage, repacked the bags in her car. She went inside the house, took off two ceremonial jackets — Oleksandr's and her own, put them on white sacks. She found the driver and called a friend from her native Volyn, who agreed to take Oksana's treasures. And Oksana herself remained waiting.

Other colleagues and wives of the military who stayed in the city moved in with her. It was safer together. Seven adults, three dogs, two cats and a child. The gas supply in Berdiansk disappeared almost immediately, and Chechens soon entered the city and started hunting the military. The inhabitants of Oksana's rented house were sitting quietly, did not turn on the light for several days, and even the child was behaving those days.

On March 27, when Oksana found out that Sasha was in captivity, she decided to leave. The woman buried the documents of the war veteran, Oleksandr's dagger, which she forgot to transfer by car to Volyn, in the yard. She herself with a bag in one hand and a leash in the other left the house, which had been her home for the last two years.

For some reason, she remembered a dream she had before the full-scale war: the two of them with Sasha, and only enemies around. And then — an abyss. And Sasha is gone. She is alone above the abyss.

Oleksandr during the full-scale war, February 2022
Photo: provided to hromadske

Kyiv. September 27, 2022

On September 27, a group of people gathered in Kyiv's Podil district. They were holding posters with photos of their relatives. They came to the capital to meet with representatives of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. All of them were united and organized by a small thin woman with glasses and short hair — Oksana Boychuk.

For exactly six months she kept silent about her husband's capture. She was afraid that the information could harm him, because Oleksandr Boychuk is a big fish. He is a veteran of military service, chief petty officer of a division of surface ships, senior midshipman, participant of combat operations in Iraq. And most importantly — the commander of the ship, who did not side with Russia in 2014.

Oksana's khaki backpack with the inscription "Armed Forces of Ukraine" contains a pile of papers — all the information about 45 people, sailors from the military unit A 0373, where both Boychuks serve. Oksana is an executive officer in the unit, something like a clerk, if translated into civilian language.

Some of the people on this list have the status of "prisoners of war", one — Panteleimon Sobko — died at Azovstal, Viktor Shaposhnikov was returned from captivity, most are listed as "missing". Her Sasha is listed as "probably captured". The Russian side has never confirmed that it is holding Boychuk.

However, Oksana believes that Sasha is alive and will return home. And she helps others to believe. She finds the strength to support people who, like her, have no information about their relatives for months. A mother who is waiting for two sons from captivity. A wife who gave birth to a boy whom her father has not yet seen. A young woman who breaks down in tears at the meeting with the officials: someone informed her by phone that her husband, who is held in Olenivka, is seriously wounded because of the shelling of the colony. But she is not sure if it is true. And no one answers her questions.

On November 22, the Boychuks have a silver wedding. Oksana dreams that they will celebrate it together. And then someday they will settle in their house, which they dreamed of all their lives. And Russians will never expel them from there again. The house will definitely be in their native Volyn. Because no matter how much Boychuk sailed the great seas, he always held on to his birthplace, where he began his service in the army.

Meanwhile, Oksana from Kyiv returns to her next temporary home. Now it is in Odesa. Their military unit was relocated there from Berdiansk. The rented one-room apartment will finally not welcome her with emptiness. Boychuk will be waiting for Oksana. Viacheslav Oleksandrovych. Son, graduate of the Naval Institute. Lieutenant. He was permitted a three-day leavc.

Oksana Boychuk during the event in Kyiv, September 27, 2022
Photo: Bohdan Kutiepov / hromadske

******

All journalism institutes teach that a journalist should be objective and impartial. To look at the situation from the outside. Frankly speaking, I am not an outsider in this story. Oleksandr Boychuk is a friend of my family. On my windowsill, an orchid presented by the Boychuks bloomed for a long time and abundantly, only in recent months, just when Boychuk was taken prisoner, it stopped blooming.

On my shelf there is a cap with the Henichesk minesweeper. The ship is gone — the Russians sank it. But I really hope that the commander of Henichesk — the one who presented this cap, is alive. And that he will return home soon. To his wife. To his sons. To his grandchildren. To his dream home in Volyn. Where he will finally drop anchor.

On July 2, 2017, the YouTube channel hromadske released the film Henichesk — about the history of the only Ukrainian minesweeper, its crew and commander Oleksandr Boychuk.

/ By Khrystyna Kotsira