Ukrainian nurse Viktoria Obidina spent five months in captivity, forced to drink non-potable water while starving and being beaten. Her greatest fear, however, was not knowing what would happen to her four-year-old daughter.
“They brought us water from a lake, sometimes with fish. In August, when the lake started to bloom, the water tasted like algae,” says Viktoria, who returned to Ukraine in mid-October on a prisoner swap.
In an interview with AFP, the 26-year-old shared her experience in Olevnika prison, located in pro-Russian separatist territory in eastern Ukraine.
When Russia launched the offensive on February 24, military nurse Viktoria was sent from Mariupol to Azovstal, a huge industrial complex where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers resisted the underground siege.
Viktoria’s daughter, Alisa, stayed in her family’s apartment. But when the food ran out and the Russian bombing became constant, they decided to take her to Azovstal.
In the basement, the girl helped her mother. “She was so grown up! She knew very well that I couldn’t be distracted. She helped and gave the medicines. I just said which ones and for whom,” Viktoria said. “I realized that if we weren’t there, who would take care of the injured?” adds the nurse.
There were also moments of despair. “She asked me, ‘Mama, is this our last day?’ Of course I didn’t tell her that we would live, that everything would be fine. But the bombings were constant, we were terrified.”
It was at one of those moments that a soldier from Azovstal recorded a short video of Alisa hiding in a… bunker and with a book in hand he begged to go home.
4-year-old Alisa is the daughter of a Ukrainian female military doctor in Mariupol. Her mother treats wounded civilians and soldiers in a bomb shelter used as a hospital in the besieged city. These people urgently need help and evacuation. They’re afraid the Russians won’t let them escape alive pic.twitter.com/T2CWsVYXwd
– ТРУХА⚡️English (@TpyxaNews) April 17, 2022
The video went around the world and helped pressure the Russians to evacuate civilians from the steel plant.
“She’s been waiting to see me”
In May, Viktoria and her daughter left Azovstal with other civilians thanks to a UN evacuation. However, Russian troops recognized them from the video and the mother was detained. Before she was taken away, however, she managed to leave her daughter with someone else.
“I was told she would be sent to an orphanage and I was a prisoner,” recalled the mother, who accused Russian investigators of assault and forcing her to reveal information about the Ukrainian military.
In Olevnika Prison, she was locked up with about twenty people in a six-person cell. During the time she was imprisoned, she had no news about her daughter and no idea what would happen.
Viktoria and other inmates were transferred to the Russian city of Tanganrog in October, where she believed she would be moving to another prison. Hands tied and blindfolded, they were put on a plane.
Finally, they were taken to Ukrainian territory by bus, and Viktoria realized that it was a prisoner exchange.
With the help of relatives and volunteers, Alisa, who turned five this month, managed to meet her grandmother in Poland.
The prisoner lost 10 kilograms during childbirth and is being treated at a psychological rehabilitation clinic in Dnipro, central Ukraine. Now he plans to leave the army and dedicate himself to his daughter.
In Poland, Alisa goes to kindergarten and learns Polish. Mother and daughter were able to contact each other via a telephone call. “She’s grown so much. She said she missed me so much and she’s been waiting to see me,” Viktoria revealed.
Source: DN
