Three years after Ukraine’s army was desperately defending the port of Mariupol, the wives of soldiers who were captured when it finally fell are still fighting to bring them home from Russia, and have asked US president Donald Trump to help their cause.
The start of Russia’s devastating attack on the city was vividly documented in the Oscar-winning film 20 Days in Mariupol, but the battle raged on for almost three months, ending only in May 2022 when Kyiv ordered some 2,500 troops to lay down arms and leave the vast Azovstal steelworks that they had turned into a fortress.
Azovstal became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, as Mariupol’s defenders defied dwindling supplies of food and ammunition to tie down a vastly larger Russian force in the city on the Azov Sea, even as casualties grew and a field hospital in the factory had to perform amputations and other surgery in spartan conditions.
Relatives of the besieged fighters saw Russia pummelling Azovstal from air, land and sea, until the order to evacuate fuelled their hopes that the soldiers would now survive and return home after a few months in a prisoner exchange.
In fact, it was just the start of a much longer ordeal for the soldiers and their relatives. Well over 1,000 Mariupol defenders are still in captivity and scores were killed soon after the fall of Azovstal in what Ukraine calls a heinous Russian war crime.
On the night of July 28th, 2022, explosions at the Olenivka jail in an occupied part of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region turned one of its barracks into an inferno, killing more than 50 prisoners of war (POWs) and injuring more than 100.
“I saw on the news that there had been an explosion at Olenivka. But there was no detailed information,” says Anna Lobova, whose husband Oleh Lobov was being held at the prison after fighting at Azovstal.
“Then Russia released a list of the dead and the wounded from the explosion, and his name was on both lists. It was the start of a time of horror, full of doubts and fears. It wasn’t until the middle of August that I saw a clip of POWs in a Donetsk hospital. Oleh was there, wounded but alive.”
One of his comrades, Artem Hondiul, had been among hundreds of wounded men in Azovstal. Shrapnel had hit him in the pelvis and he could not walk or feel his legs, but without an X-ray machine in the factory-fortress the medics could not risk surgery.
“In June, Artem had called from detention and said he hoped to be swapped and sent home by August,” says his wife, Anastasiia Hondiul.
“But he was in the barracks at Olenivka that was hit. And the next day I saw he was on the list released by Russia of those who had been badly injured,” she adds.
“At the start of that August I saw him on Russian television, being interviewed in a Donetsk hospital. He was very thin, his skin was covered in burns and his right arm was wounded. He said he loved us very much and was waiting to be exchanged.”
Moscow claimed Olenivka had been hit by US-made Himars rockets supplied to Ukraine, but that was dismissed by Kyiv and a United Nations report that suggested the barracks had been shelled from a Russian-controlled area; Russia also prevented UN and international Red Cross teams from accessing Olenivka to investigate.
Lobov and Hondiul are among more than 800 soldiers from the Azov regiment who are still in Russian captivity and make up the bulk of Mariupol defenders who have not been freed in prisoner swaps.
“We don’t know where they are being held or what condition they are in,” says Lobova. “They’ve been in Russian prisons for more than 1,000 days. We thought that in all that time Ukraine would have been able to bring home at least those who were hurt in the terrorist attack on Olenivka.”
Lobova and Hondiul belong to a group called the Olenivka Community that campaigns for the release of Mariupol defenders in the face of what it sees as official indifference or foot-dragging on the issue in Kyiv.
Some of the group’s members are threatening to go on hunger strike next month, and in January they urged Trump to intercede on their behalf with Russian president Vladimir Putin as the US pushes to end Europe’s biggest war since 1945.
“It is known that you intend to talk with Putin and organise a personal meeting. We kindly ask you, Mr Trump, to appeal to Putin to release the wounded prisoners of war who were treacherously blown up [at Olenivka],” the group said in its appeal. “This crime has not been investigated ... Those who survived the hell are still being held in Russian captivity. We are begging you for help.”
The White House has not replied directly to the Olenivka Community’s message but has pledged to help Ukraine bring home soldiers and civilians from Russian jails.
Survivors of the Olenivka massacre say that the day before the explosions they were transferred from regular barracks to a building that had been hastily converted into a makeshift dormitory.
All the men who were moved into the doomed building were from Azov, which Russia demonises as a band of fascist fanatics fighting for a “neo-Nazi” Kyiv regime, even long after the unit has expanded away from its far-right roots and become a brigade of Ukraine’s national guard.
Russia gives Azov POWs long jail terms – 12 of them were sentenced this week to between 13 and 23 years on terrorism charges – and is reluctant to exchange them.
Bohdan Krotevych, Azov’s chief of staff during the Azovstal siege, was freed with other leaders of the unit in September 2022, when Russia swapped 215 captives for Ukrainian politician and Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk and other prisoners held by Kyiv.
Krotevych was kept in Olenivka for a few days and then moved to the notorious Lefortovo prison in Moscow, where he was placed in solitary confinement. He was not allowed out for exercise and meals were slid through a hole in the cell door.
“For four months I didn’t see or speak to anyone. I think they were trying to drive me and other POWs insane. I was under video surveillance 24 hours a day and the light was always on, so it was impossible to distinguish day from night,” he says.
“But compared to other places where our soldiers are held, Lefortovo was like a resort. Many Azov fighters have died of torture,” adds Krotevych (32), who resigned from Azov last month but retains close ties to the brigade.
He says any peace deal must oblige Russia to free all POWs, and believes Ukraine has a duty to bring them home.
“We had no way of taking our casualties out of Azovstal and couldn’t leave without them. Above all, that’s why we didn’t get out ... And when we finally left, it was because the lives of our wounded depended on it, because we didn’t have medical supplies to treat them,” Krotevych recalls.
“I like the film Saving Private Ryan, which asks why so many people die for just one guy. It’s the idea that no one will be left behind – and I still believe in that.”
