“We were beaten twice a day”
Daily beatings, filthy food, lights on 24 hours a day and a complete lack of hygiene. This is the ordeal endured for five and a half months Viatcheslav Gorban, a Ukrainian prisoner of war in Russia.
This 50-year-old metallurgical engineer chose to take up arms on February 24 to defend his city, Mariupol, after Vladimir Putin launched his troops into Ukraine.
The world had met him two days later, when he stood guard at the entrance to the military hospital, hours before the industrial port was surrounded by Russian forces.
Released on 1is November as part of an exchange of prisoners with Russia, Vyacheslav Gorban literally melted. “I lost 23 kilos out of 85”, he explains in an even voice. He is currently hospitalized in Dnipro for thyroid problems but is expected to be discharged ” within a week “.
His character has not changed: calm, restrained, determined. Hardened by trials. Before being taken prisoner, he spent two and a half months in the hell of Azovstal, the steel factory where he had once worked and which had turned into the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance.
This testimony sheds light on the terrible fate reserved for prisoners of war in this conflict. The UN and NGOs are alarmed by the refusal of both sides to authorize inspection visits.
Read also: “We were beaten twice a day”: in Russia, the rights systematically violated of Ukrainian prisoners of war