“We were screaming. They kept saying, ‘Take off your pants! Someone is going to come and hurt you!’ One man held a knife to my ear, whilst the other fired blanks. They then poured petrol all over my head,” said Pavlo Yurov, a theater director from Kyiv who endured 70 days of captivity by Kremlin-backed insurgents in Sloviansk. “We kept saying, again and again, that we meant them no harm.”
On Aug. 20, the Kyiv Post sat with
the 34-year-old theater director in a sunlit Kyiv courtyard not far from the
Golden Gate monument. Yurov’s closely cropped hair is now streaked with grey, whilst his nose
reveals a livid, red scar on the top bridge.
“They broke my nose
first. It was excruciating and I went into a state of shock. I’ve never been a
fighter; growing up, I was something of a pacifist,” he continued.
With his slim build
and easy smile, it‘s hard not to believe him. On April 25, he and a
companion, Denis Hrishchuk, had been travelling back from Donetsk when they
decided to stop off in the separatist-held city for a few hours before
continuing on their journey to Kyiv. “I was born in Antratsyt in the Luhansk
region, right on the border with Russia. I needed to go and see the situation
for myself, with my own eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to believe what I saw on
the TV and on the internet.”
Walking around the
city taking pictures, the duo stopped at a café in the center of town. They
soon noticed that it was filled with older locals loyal to the separatists and Russian journalists. “We looked out of
place and they could sense that we were different… an argument soon broke
out between us about the nature of these ‘occupants’ in Sloviansk. It was a
provocation from both sides. We soon left, realizing that it was worthless,” he
recalled.
But within a few meters
of leaving the restaurant, they were stopped by two rebels holding Kalashnikovs
and were told to get on their knees. The next few moments were a terrifying,
confusing blur: “What’s strange is that a patrol of police were nearby and we
shouted at them to help us. It was no use – the separatists told us that we’d
been detained by order of the (self-proclaimed) People’s Mayor of Sloviansk, (Vyacheslav)
Ponomaryov,” he said.
Yurov and Hrishchuk were
transported to Sloviansk’s State Security building where they were promptly
blindfolded and tied up. Then the beatings began. What followed was two and a
half months of an existence ruled by fear and survival. They only escaped when
the insurgents retreated on July 4.
What’s apparent when
talking to Yurov today is that he doesn’t show a trace of self-pity for what
happened to him. In fact, despite the horrors he witnessed, he’s largely
positive about his period of captivity. Looking back, he strongly believes that
he was there by no accident: in his eyes, he and Hrishchuk had created this
dangerous situation for themselves with their decision to visit volatile,
rebel-held territory. Asking him how he’d coped with those endless months spent
isolated from the outside world, denied sunlight and comfort, he said that for
him it was simple — he prayed.
“For the most of it, I
didn’t panic but remained patient. I used my time there for psychoanalysis
myself. I reflected on my behavior and my relationships with people.
“I thought about my past
and what I had done wrong…I needed to separate myself from other people and
operate on my own: it frustrated me to see others around me killing time — time
is not meant to be killed. I needed to create my own power in this situation —
a man can still be free and powerful even if he is kept in a box…”
After the initial
attempts to terrify and intimidate Yurov into submission, his captors threw him
and Hrishchuk into the dark, dank basement of the SBU building along with
around four to seven other prisoners — including journalists, pro-Ukrainian activists and
city council deputies. They were kept here for a fortnight, their only source
of light seeping in from a small, narrow window. For the first week they slept
in the squatting position, their hands bound in front of them with tape. They
were only allowed outside to use the toilet, but they had to keep their eyes
closed: they were never allowed to look up at the sky.
On their third day of
captivity, when one of the other prisoners was released, Yurov and Hrishchuk
attempted to pass him a note to communicate with their families. Unfortunately,
they were unaware of their constant surveillance and their plans were foiled.
Their captors punished them harshly: a 12-hour rotational shift of beatings
where every quarter of an hour, a man would come and thrash them brutally.
“We weren’t allowed to
sleep. We were just beaten continuously. I remember searching into this man’s
eyes and saw not only anger but a hazy, off-focus look: his mood hadn’t changed
for the last four hours and I realized he was on drugs,” said Yurov.
But his captors
weren’t all brutes. One man, who only went by the name Sasha, was different. On
one particularly dark day, the men were driven to tears by a build-up of
desperation and frustration. Sasha quickly responded, bringing them ice-cream,
sweets and cigarettes. He rarely carried a gun, and was always helpful and
polite — Yurov believed that he was there by coercion. Later on, he discovered
that both of Sasha’s parents had died in the bombings.
These rare moments of
compassion gave Yurov faith in humanity. When the men were transferred to the
city’s police cells, their situation vastly improved. The living conditions
were much better — there were beds with mattresses and blankets as well as a
toilet and sink. There was even a window where the hostages were able to see
the sun, sky and a lone tree.
“My time in the
basement was a huge trial. I am a very clean and hygienic person…With our
movement to the cells, our chances of survival significantly improved. They
wouldn’t care for us in this way if we were going to die,” he noted.
Indeed, they were soon
given the job of delivering food to other captives which helped to improve
their mental and physical state. They were given a small copy of the Gideon
Bible as well as, in an uncommon display of humor, Felix Dzerzhinsky’s “Prison
Diary.”
“We were also given
a copy of the Ukrainian criminal code. I used to read it and calculate how many
years my captors deserved,” he said.
It took eight days for
Yurov to read the entirety of the New Testament, something which affected his
philosophies and present outlook on life.
“I started to
appreciate the simple and regular things in life: for a whole month in June we
were kept inside, and we weren’t allowed outside. I remember when I finally got
out, seeing the starry sky and noticing how beautiful and bright it was. There
was no electricity in the city and the stars were awesome. I’m trying to keep
that attitude now — war does this to people. It’s important to appreciate
friendship, love and simple kindness as well as small, material things,” he
recounted.
Kyiv Post staff writer Francesca Ebel can
be reached at [email protected].
