From hell to happily ever after: A soldier’s 50-kilogram weight loss in Russian captivity and new beginning

His beloved initially didn’t recognize his voice, face, or build.

“If we hadn’t spoken on the phone and he hadn’t said he’d come out of the hospital to meet me in the courtyard, I’d never have recognized him. But when he came closer, we hugged—I saw it was his lips, his nose, his gray eyes,” she told hromadske in June.

Before captivity, Oleksandr weighed 103 kilograms at a height of 187 centimeters; in captivity, he lost 50 kilograms and 7 centimeters. It bent him.

Two months have passed. The 52-year-old Oleksandr was recently discharged from the hospital. The diagnosis of “tuberculosis” was not confirmed.

“Of course, they treated him, improved his overall condition,” says Olena Yurchyna. “He still needs to regain strength because he walks very, very heavily: swelling in his legs. He’s weak.

But he’s already gained some weight, and outwardly, I recognize my Sasha. He’s no longer a mummy. His natural facial features have returned. Internally, he’s also recovered to his ‘factory settings’: he jokes a lot. Captivity, of course, changes every person forever, but it’s wonderful if they can remain themselves. He doesn’t want to talk much about the past; he wants to forget it like a bad dream. He once said that captivity breaks the young because they’re more vulnerable, but those over 45—hardly. He likes to repeat that he carries a backpack full of bricks behind him—life experience.”

Now Oleksandr and Olena are renting an apartment in the very center of the Ukrainian capital on Khreshchatyk. They managed to find one for a small cost. Oleksandr hadn’t been to Kyiv before, so his beloved shows him the city’s charms, taking short walks daily. Mostly, these are outings to places with good food: Olena constantly strives to feed her Sasha.

Before the invasion, the couple was thinking about marriage; then the proposal came over the phone from Olenivka, where Oleksandr was held captive. At that time, Olena went to court to establish the “fact of living together as a family, equivalent to marriage.” Two and a half years of ordeal, witness interviews—and now she holds that document in her hands.

“Yes, indeed, that’s what’s written in the document. But the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ aren’t there. And after his return from captivity, Sasha proposed to me. Back in Olenivka, he wrote a poem and set it to music. Here, he bought a guitar: it turned into a musical proposal. And we went together to buy an engagement ring. He would’ve done it himself, but he said, ‘I don’t know your size,’” Olena smiles over the phone.

A few days later, the lovers bought wedding rings. And on August 30, they officially tied the knot.

Olena describes the day like this:

“We went to the ceremony just the two of us. No guests. A nice ceremony. No pomp, no Mendelssohn march, no auntie with a bow on her head. I liked that the stereotype of Soviet weddings with ‘bitterly’ was broken. The girl leading the ceremony said, ‘Go ahead and kiss, don’t mind me. Sweetly!’ When we signed the documents, we laughed our heads off. I changed my last name. So now, if you use just initials, both Sasha and I are Strafun O. V. He’s Oleksandr Vitaliyovych, I’m Olena Volodymyrivna. So Sasha says, ‘What’s this? Did I just marry myself?’”

What they’ll do next—they don’t know yet. Oleksandr submitted a report for discharge from military service.

“Everyone who returns from captivity has a choice: either three months of leave and then back to service, or discharge immediately. Well, Sasha wrote a report for discharge. I told him, too, that’s enough, he’s fought enough, I can’t handle it anymore. We want to buy a house; for now, we’re both homeless,” Olena laughs.

Sasha adds: “We’ve been through the worst; everything will be fine from now on.”

And I add a line from Leonid Bykov’s 1974 film Only ‘Old Men’ Are Going Into Battle: “We will live.”