‘Russians invaded my house and held a Ukrainian soldier captive there’

He was held captive for almost a month – Russian footage uploaded online shows him wrapped in one of Marina’s carpets.

When the Russian soldiers eventually retreated, they left Oleksii behind. In all he spent 46 days in Marina’s house and for much of that time he had barely any food or water.

Injured, starving and dehydrated, he was unable to leave the building.

“I was able to find some crumbs on the floor,” he tells the BBC World Service from Kyiv.

“There was a piece of cracker, which a mouse stole from me at night. I hid it, and then the mouse probably stole it because I couldn’t find it.”

But hunger was nothing compared to thirst. One day, after the Russians had left, the desperate need for water almost killed Oleksii.

He tore panels from the sauna in the hope that there might be water inside the pipes. He managed to break one open and drank some of the liquid inside, but it was antifreeze. Those few sips caused internal burns and were nearly fatal.

Then, in March that year, when Ukrainian forces retook parts of Vuhledar and reached Sadovaya Street, another video from Marina’s home went viral. It shows ex-New Zealand soldier Kane Te Tai entering number 17 and finding Oleksii.