A lauded Ukrainian paramedic he recorded his time in Mariupol on a small memory card, taken out into the world on a tampon. Now she is a prisoner of the Russians and Mariupol is about to fall.
Yuliia Paievska, who as a volunteer paramedic is known as Taira, used his body camera to record 256 gigabytes of video of his team’s frantic efforts to save lives. He gave the harrowing footage to a team from the Associated Press, the last international journalists in the Ukrainian city, as they left in a rare humanitarian caravan.
Russian soldiers captured Taira and her driver the next day, March 16, in one of many enforced disappearances in areas of Ukraine now held by Russia. Russia has said she was working for the nationalist Azov Battalion, following the Moscow line that she is working to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. But the AP found no evidence of this and friends and colleagues say that she had no ties to Azov.
The hospital where she led the evacuation of the wounded is not affiliated with Azov. And the video that she recorded shows her trying to save wounded Russian soldiers, along with Ukrainian civilians.
A clip from March 10 shows two Russian soldiers being carelessly pulled out of an ambulance by a Ukrainian soldier. One of them is in a wheelchair. The other is kneeling, his hands tied behind his back, with a leg wound.
Two Russian soldiers wounded. AP Photo
A Ukrainian soldier curses one of them.
“Calm down, calm down,” Taira tells the Ukrainian soldier.
A woman asks him: “Are you going to treat the Russians?
Taira replies, “They wouldn’t be so nice to us. But I couldn’t do anything else. They are prisoners of war”.
kidnapped
Tara, 53, is now a prisoner of the Russianslike hundreds of local officials, journalists and other prominent Ukrainians who have been kidnapped or captured.
An evacuation from Mariupol, in the Taira chamber. AP Photo
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has recorded 204 cases of enforced disappearances and says some of the victims may have been tortured and five were later found dead.
The Russians have targeted medical personnel and hospitals, despite the fact that the Geneva Convention prescribes protection “in all circumstances” for both military and civilian medical personnel.
Russian soldiers accused a woman in a convoy from Mariupol on May 8 of being a military doctor and forced her to choose between letting her 4-year-old daughter accompany her to an unknown fate or continuing on to Ukrainian-controlled territory. The mother and daughter were separated.
The Taira plight and what it reveals about Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian prisoners take on new meaning as the last defenders of Mariupol are moved to areas under Russian control.
Yuliia Paievska, Taira, and her images. AP Photo
Russia says that more than 1,700 Ukrainian fighters barricaded in a steel plant surrendered this week, while Ukrainian authorities said the fighters left after completing their mission.
Ukraine’s government says it tried to include Taira’s name in a prisoner swap weeks ago. But Russia denies having it in its possession, despite her appearance on television in the separatist region of Donetsk and on the Russian television network NTV, handcuffed and with bruises on her face.
A photo of Taira at the Invictus games in 2018. AP Photo
sports star
Taira is known in Ukraine as a sports star who trained the country’s volunteer medical force. The video she recorded from February 6 to March 10 provides an intimate documentation of a besieged city which has already become a world symbol of the Russian invasion and the Ukrainian resistance.
On February 24, the first day of the war, Taira recounted the efforts to bandage the head wound of a Ukrainian soldier.
Two days later, he ordered his colleagues to wrap a wounded Russian soldier in a blanket. She calls the young man “Sun” – a favorite nickname for the many wounded soldiers who passed through his hands – and asks him why he came to the Ukraine.
“You’re taking care of me,” the soldier says, as if in awe. “His response: “We treat everyone equally.” AP Photo
“You’re taking care of me”, says the soldier, as if astonished. Her response from him: “We treat everyone equally.”
Hours later, two children – brother and sister – arrive seriously injured from a shooting at a checkpoint. His parents are dead. By the end of the night, despite Taira’s pleas for “don’t go, little boy”, the little boy also dies.
Taira turns her face away and cries. “I hate this,” she says.
During the video, she complains of chronic pain caused by injuries to her back and hips. joke. And as always, sports a stuffed animal on the vest to give to any child you treat.
Nothing is known about Taira and his driver. AP Photo
On March 15, a police officer hands the small memory card to AP journalists. Taira, using a walkie-talkie, asked them to take out the Mariupol card. The card was hidden inside a tampon when the journalists passed through 15 Russian checkpoints.
The next day, Taira disappeared along with his driver, Serhiy.
A video shown on March 21 on a Russian news program announced his capture. In it, Taira looks stunned and blushes while reading a statement calling for an end to the fighting. As she speaks, a voiceover calls her colleagues Nazis.
Yuliia Paievska, known as Taira, in Mariupol. AP Photo
Married with a teenage daughter, Taira knew what war can do to a family. At one point, a wounded Ukrainian soldier asked him to call her mother, and she told him that he could call her, “so don’t make her nervous.”
Taira’s husband, Vadim Puzanov, said that He has received little news since his disappearance.
“Accusing a volunteer paramedic of all mortal sins, including organ trafficking, is already outrageous propaganda, I don’t even know why,” he said.
Yuliia Paievska attends to a boy. AP Photo
Taira was part of Ukraine’s team at the Invictus Games, a competition for military personnel who have been wounded. Received the body camera last year to film for a Netflix documentary series about inspirational figures produced by Britain’s Prince Harry, who founded the games.
Instead, she filmed the images of the war. In her last video of her, she is sitting next to the driver who would disappear with her. It is March 9.
“Two weeks of war. Mariupol under siege”he says quietly. Then he curses and the image goes out.
AP Agency
PB
* Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb contributed from Beirut; Inna Varenytsia from kyiv; Mstyslav Chernov from Kharkiv; Erika Kinetz from Brussels; and Elena Becatoros in Zaporiya. Lori Hinnant reported from Paris.