#released #Azovstal #soldier #recounts #ordeal
In contrast to the festive summer crowds around him in central Kyiv, Vladyslav Zhaivoronok has a somber tale to tell about defending Mariupol, the injuries he sustained and his weeks in captivity.
The 29-year-old Azov regiment soldier, who is leaning on his crutches when he lost his left leg in combat, spoke to AFP in front of a giant banner reading “Free Mariupol Defenders” on a city hall building.
“It got worse and worse, harder and harder. We held the defense as long as it could be held,” he said of the fighting at Azovstal Steelworks – some of the fiercest in the past six months.
Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24 and within days had surrounded Mariupol, a strategic industrial port center on the Sea of Azov.
Zhaivoronok said he and his comrades took up positions at the city’s sprawling Azovstal facility in March in a desperate bid to keep fighting.
Under constant fire, he made his base in a half-ruined bunker and went out during the day to carry out his duties as a drone operator.
He said that “the entire area was littered with building fragments” and that there was a desperate shortage of water, food and weapons.
“It was consistently bad everywhere,” Zhaivoronok said.
As he spoke, passers-by looked back at the soldier, who was wearing military-style brown shorts with a bare left pant leg.
– Stretched from Azovstal –
Despite the rapidly deteriorating situation in Azovstal, Zhaivoronok said the soldiers managed to keep morale up.
“The last few days I’ve been expecting some kind of final fight. We’ve been waiting for it and we were prepared for it,” he said.
Then, on May 15, he was hit by an anti-tank missile.
Rushing to the “medical bunker,” he found himself on the brink of death on an improvised operating table.
His right eye was also badly injured in the explosion.
His leg was amputated the next morning.
He then regained consciousness for just a few seconds before being taken out of Azovstal.
He recalls lying on a stretcher and seeing the Russian soldiers’ patches with the “Z” symbol of the invaders.
Due to his serious injury, he was spared the fate of his comrades, who were taken to the notorious Olenivka prison in the occupied Donetsk region, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners were reportedly killed in an explosion last month.
But the weeks that Zhaivoronok spent in captivity in one of the Donetsk hospitals brought him suffering of a different kind.
“There was no contact with relatives, no access to the phone,” he said.
The medical care is “very inferior” and medicines are scarce.
“I was dripping from rotting flesh because I wasn’t on antibiotics until day five after a serious injury,” he said.
He and three other soldiers from his community were given just enough to eat “that the heart does not stop.”
“And we were told every day that no one needed us, that they would not trade us for anyone, that everyone had left us.”
– ‘What presses from inside’ –
His month and a half in captivity ended without warning.
“We were woken up at 4 a.m., the lists were read, we were taken outside, loaded onto buses and driven until the evening,” Zhaivoronok recalls.
He and over a hundred other wounded Ukrainian prisoners left the hospital on a prisoner exchange.
“I couldn’t breathe out until I was on Ukrainian territory, out of range of the (Russian) artillery.”
Zhaivoronok tries to joke, ignoring his serious injuries.
“I brought a lot of work to our doctors,” he grins.
As a career soldier, he said he continues to fulfill certain military obligations despite his injuries.
The soldier speaks very calmly.
Only once does his voice break slightly when he speaks of thousands of Ukrainian prisoners in Russian captivity.
“There’s no rest. It’s pressing from the inside. When the boys are back, I can breathe more freely.”
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