Yulia Paievska, 53, popularly known in Ukraine by her nickname Taira, has risen to folk hero fame. She said the abuse began immediately after she was identified at a checkpoint near Mariupol and taken prisoner, along with her driver, on March 16. “For five days I didn’t have food and basically didn’t drink,” Paievska told CNN on Tuesday, nearly three weeks after she was released in a June 17 prisoner exchange. The abuse, including beatings, he said, was “extreme” and “I didn’t stop for a minute in those three months.” From mid-March to mid-June, the pair were held in occupied territory in the Donetsk detention center by a combination of forces from Russia and the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, he said. “They tell you all the time that you are a fascist, a Nazi,” he said, comparing the conditions to a gulag. She said she was told “it would be better to be dead than to see what happens next”. Frustrated that Paievska would not give her Russian and pro-Russian separatist captors an on-camera confession about alleged neo-Nazi ties, she said, “I was thrown into solitary confinement, in a dungeon without a mattress, on a metal bunk. “ Paievska’s reputation in Ukraine has grown since she first appeared during the 2014 Maidan uprising, where she supported those protesting against the then pro-Russian president as a volunteer doctor. From there he went east to the front lines as Ukrainian troops battled separatist forces in the Donbass region, eventually officially joining the Ukrainian armed forces.
PROPAGANDA VIDEO
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February this year, Paievska was in the southern city of Mariupol equipped with a body camera, filming hours of dramatic scenes of the injured arriving at emergency rooms and efforts to save them. With Russian forces closing in, Paievska managed to get one of her memory cards to Associated Press reporters who were among the last to flee the city. The card was hidden in a tampon, Paievska said. She told CNN that she destroyed another card with her teeth and threw it out as she approached the checkpoint where she and her driver were taken. Forces at the checkpoint soon recognized her, Paievska said, and within days of her abduction she was forced to sit for Russian television cameras for what would become a 47-minute propaganda video accusing her of using children as human beings. shields and organ harvesting and compares her to Hitler. In the film, Paievska is led into an interrogation room, handcuffed and hooded, and forced to sit under a harsh, bright light as the narrator plays out the supposed danger she poses. The video, broadcast by state-run NTV channel, was released 12 days after Paievska was shot. During that time, and throughout her detention, Paievska was not allowed to contact her husband, Vadim Puzanov. “You watch too many American movies,” she says they told her. “There will be no summons.” Instead, Paievska says, he was fed a steady stream of lies boasting of non-existent Russian military successes in eastern Ukraine. Eventually, she and other inmates were able to piece together some of the reality of what was happening with various pieces of information they gathered. When Paievska was arrested, she was told she could face the death penalty. But one day she was taken out of her cell and the possibility of a prisoner exchange was mentioned, raising her hopes. On June 17, the exchange was made and Paievska was able to call her husband for the first time in more than three months. “I didn’t recognize her [voice] because I didn’t expect him to call me,” Puzanov said. Along with their daughter, the family was reunited at the hospital where Payevska was taken by Ukrainian forces, a moment Puzanov described as “the happiest event”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the news in his nightly video address, saying: “Taira is already home. And we will continue to work to free everyone else.”
“NEGLECTABLE STATUS”
Paievska declined to say where the exchange took place or who it was traded for. Since her abduction, the already slight, heavily tattooed Paievska says she has lost 10kg (up from 20kg) and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He won’t be returning to the front lines anytime soon, he said, fearing he might become a burden on the forces. Instead, it focuses on qualifying for the 2023 Invictus Games for injured veterans in swimming and archery. She suffered a hip injury that was aggravated by work on the front and had both hip joints replaced. Paievska blames the Kremlin’s powerful propaganda machine for fueling the Russian war effort and, like Ukraine’s leaders, says Ukraine needs more help from the West to defeat Russia. “This is an absolutely ruthless regime that wants to dominate the world,” he said. “They told me that the whole world must only submit to Great Russia and: “This is your fate. You have to accept, just stop resisting.”
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