Ukrainians hope for a New Year prisoner exchange with Russia

Lena was released after two weeks of captivity. But the psychological scars of what she experienced in a Russian PoW facility remain. “We constantly heard screams, we knew the men [in our unit] were being tortured,” she says.

“They beat us mercilessly, with their fists, sticks, hammers, anything they could find,” Andriy says. “They stripped us naked in the cold and forced us to crawl on asphalt. Our legs were torn up, and we were left terrified and freezing.”

“The food was horrifying – sour cabbage and spoiled fish heads. It’s just a nightmare,” says the marine. “It’s like waking up from a bad dream in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, terrified.”

Andriy’s incarceration lasted far longer than his wife’s – two-and-a-half years.

On his release in the prisoner exchange three months ago Andriy met his two-year-old son, Leon, for the first time. When the couple were captured by Russian forces, Lena didn’t know she was expecting.

“When I found out I was pregnant, I just cried, first of all from happiness, but then from sadness, because I couldn’t tell my husband.”