photo #6598019

This young girl in the photo is Maryana Chechelyuk. Before and after Russian captivity. Today she finally returned home after two years in a Russian prison. Maryana was kidnapped by Russian occupiers in May 2022 while traveling to Zaporizhzhia from surrounded Mariupol, where she worked as a police investigator. Then a humanitarian corridor was organized for civilians, her parents were allowed through, and Maryana, along with her minor sister Alina, were taken for filtration to the village of Bezymennoye, Donetsk region. From there, Maryana was taken to prison in Donetsk. During more than two years of their daughter’s captivity, the Chechelyuk family was only able to talk to her once on the phone and receive several letters. In them, the girl talked about the terrible conditions of detention and her seriously deteriorating health. At various times, Maryana was held in custody in Donetsk, Yelenovka, Taganrog, Kamyshin, and a colony in Mariupol. During her two years of imprisonment, she endured a lot of physical and mental torture. They starved her, beat her, and threatened to shave her head. The girl seriously lost weight, her kidneys and legs began to fail, she began to have back problems, and developed chronic bronchitis. Only after this did Russia allow Maryana to be exchanged for its serviceman. There is no explanation for such bestial, inhuman treatment of Maryana and other women in Russian dungeons. She was not a combatant, she was being held hostage for no reason. Her whole “fault” was that she was a representative of the Ukrainian state. About four hundred Ukrainian women continue to be held in Russian dungeons. Most of them are civilians, kidnapped in the same way as Maryana Chechelyuk. Some of them have been in captivity for three years now. For unknown reasons, Russia is very reluctant to return Ukrainian women, even in the format of exchanges for male prisoners of war. One gets the impression that the main goal of the Russian side is simply to torture them and the Ukrainian people. We have no other rational explanation. Source: t.me/hochu_zhyt/1573