"Survivors" of the torture chamber—after being held captive by the Russians, these men are forced to fend for themselves
Source: Frontliner
Authors: Danylo Dubchak, Viktoria Kalimbet
One of the Ukrainians who managed to escape from Russian captivity is Oleksiy Sivak, a native of Kherson. He was released from captivity shortly before Ukrainian troops liberated the city.
Like thousands of Ukrainians in Russian torture chambers, he endured numerous beatings, torture, and sexual violence. After his release, he began looking for ways to recover. It turned out that most programs—whether run by the government or international foundations—were aimed at helping only female victims and children.
The lack of systematic support for civilian men who had suffered from Russia’s armed aggression prompted the Kherson resident to fight for it for himself and his acquaintances. In this way, he paved the way for assistance to reach more than 400 men who had survived captivity. To ensure that as many people as possible received the necessary assistance, Oleksiy Sivak founded a nonprofit organization, which he named “Network of Ukrainian Men Who Survived Captivity and Torture: ‘Graduates.’”
Daniil Bulgakov—a 27-year-old man who spent nearly three years in Russian captivity—turned to the “Network” for help. Daniil grew up in Donetsk; he was 16 years old when militants from the Russian-backed “DPR” group seized the city. After finishing school, he moved to Kharkiv, where he worked as a computer science teacher and lived happily with his girlfriend. However, just a few years later, he had to return to Donetsk to care for his ailing grandmother. In 2020, the Russians came for Daniil, accusing him of “espionage”. While in captivity, he endured torture, regular beatings, and starvation. It was there that he learned of the start of the full-scale invasion and the deaths of his loved ones. Danylo was only able to return to territory controlled by Ukraine in January 2024.
Oleksiy’s and Danylo’s stories are different. When the Russians occupied Donetsk, Oleksiy had ten years of experience as a sailor, while Danylo was studying to be a programmer at a technical college and wasn’t even of legal age yet. When Kherson was captured, Oleksii was about to set sail on his next voyage, while 25-year-old Danylo had already been in captivity for nearly two years. Oleksiy wanted to drive the occupiers crazy by hanging Ukrainian symbols in the streets, while in Donetsk, Danylo was simply taking care of his grandmother.
These two different stories are united by the men’s pro-Ukrainian stance, the torture they endured at the hands of the Russians for it, and the hardships they faced after their captivity.
Childhood in Donetsk
After his release from captivity, Danylo Bulgakov joined “The Graduates.” Working with the organization’s documents, he spends his days at the computer, drinks plenty of energy drinks, and every few days submits applications to join various units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Wearing an olive-green T-shirt with the word “Army” on it, Daniil calls himself a militarist and insists he has been one since his youth. Even as a child, he was convinced that there would be a war between Ukraine and Russia.
He hit me with a chair because I said that one day there would be American ships in Crimea to “beat you Russians.”
Daniil Bulgakov
Growing up in Donetsk, he attended a school where, in defiance of the law, Ukrainian was not taught, and on TV he could only watch Russian channels. To this day, he sometimes mispronounces the Ukrainian “g”: that’s why he says “ґroshi,” “vyhoda,” and “sledchiy organ.” However, despite this—and despite the views of his father, who is of Russian descent—Daniil has considered himself Ukrainian since childhood.
“He once hit me with a chair because I said that one day there would be American ships in Crimea to ‘beat you Russians,’” Danylo laughs, and immediately explains: his father didn’t mean him any harm, and after such arguments, they always made up quickly.
The young man recalls that he didn’t like Russia from childhood onward: he didn’t like either the country or Putin, who was popular in Ukraine at the time. Danylo remembers trips to his father’s homeland—the city of Bratsk in Siberia. There, he was struck by the wooden train cars embedded in the ground, in which people had lived for over 40 years without plumbing or electricity. Danyil also remembers the Russians he met in Donetsk. He didn’t like them either because of the condescending way they treated Ukrainians.
When militants from the “DNR” group seized power in the city in 2014, he was 16 years old. Once he came of age, Daniil moved with his girlfriend to Sloviansk, where he was able to earn a Ukrainian diploma, and then moved on to Kharkiv. There, he got a job as a computer science teacher at a school and, at the same time, worked for a company where he repaired electronics.
“You know those ads with a photo of Brad Pitt? Well, I used to show up instead of him,” the young man jokes.
“They push me to the ground and put a bag over my head”
A few years passed, and Danylo’s grandmother fell ill with cancer, so he returned to occupied Donetsk to care for her. A year later, in May 2020, she died. After registering the inherited apartment in his name, he planned to return to Kharkiv.
People in masks burst in, armed with automatic rifles; they pinned me to the ground and put a bag over my head.
Daniil Bulgakov
On August 19, the intercom rang. The voice on the other end identified itself as the police and said they were making the rounds. Daniil thought it was a routine check, but it turned out they had come specifically for him.
“As soon as I opened the door, masked men with automatic rifles burst in, pinned me to the ground, and put a bag over my head,” Daniil recalls.
He was taken to the “DPR Ministry of State Security,” a fictitious agency created by the militants. During the interrogation, the “MGB security forces” demanded that he sign a confession of espionage, a crime punishable by 15 years in prison. At first, Danyil refused and denied any ties to the Ukrainian intelligence services. However, this did not satisfy his captors. To get their way, they began beating him.
“They beat me until evening. They kept forcing me: ‘Sign it, sign it.’ I didn’t sign anything on the first day. Although now I think I should have just done it,” Danyil recalls.
That night, they handcuffed him to a radiator. In the morning, they returned with a “tapik”—a field telephone used for electric shock torture.
When they connected the wires to my genitals, I was ready to sign anything.
Daniil Bulgakov
In the end, under duress, he signed a “confession.” However, this did not stop the torture, and the torturers continued to shock the young man with electricity. In the morning, the abuse continued. Daniil was seated on a chair, a plastic bag was pulled over his head, his arms were pulled behind his back, and he was tied up. During the interrogation, the young man was asked the same questions and forced to repeat the same confessions they already had on paper. The nonsensical questions, the video recording, and the “spectators” who watched the torture all indicated that the interrogation was a show.
“Toward the end, as a parting gesture, they decided to file down two of my teeth just for show,” says Danylo.
To prevent him from closing his jaws, they shoved a metal spreader bar into his mouth. One of the torturers began filing down my teeth with a file. Only stumps remained of the two teeth, and six months later, my gums started to fester.
“I was beaten up, electrocuted, my mouth was bleeding—I didn’t understand anything; everything was spinning. They sat me down on a chair, and I just passed out right away,” the young man recounts his last memory before his imprisonment.
The “Izolyatsia”
Torture Chamber Danylo woke up in “Izolyatsia”—a prison set up in 2014 by “DPR” militants in a contemporary art center on the grounds of a former factory. The filthy cell was no larger than 20 square meters. Fifteen people were held there, with no ventilation and a shared toilet. The youngest person in the cell was 16 years old, the oldest—98. There weren’t enough sleeping spots—metal planks welded to the walls—for everyone, so they had to sleep two or three to a spot.
One and a half seconds to stand up, pull a bag over your head, and turn to face the wall
Daniil Bulgakov
Throughout the day, prisoners were forbidden to lie down, sleep, or exercise. They were allowed to sit, but only within the field of view of the surveillance camera. Not everyone could sit at the same time—there wasn’t enough space. Whenever someone entered the cell, everyone had to stand up.
“If you hear someone approaching the door or the locks opening, you have one and a half seconds to stand up, pull the bag over your head, and turn to face the wall. If anyone didn’t make it in time, the whole cell would end up in the ‘ukhnar,’ ” says Danylo, explaining the last term—a word understood only in the Donbas—“They’ll beat everyone half to death.”
The prisoners were not allowed to have anything but the clothes on their backs. On a diet of gray wheat porridge with two pieces of bread, which they received once a day, each prisoner lost more than 10 kilograms. They tied up their sagging clothes with various pieces of wire that some prisoners found while building bunkers and trenches for the occupiers. They were also brutally punished for this.
“Not today, because there’s an exchange tomorrow”
One day, the Russians ordered everyone “accused of espionage” to shave their heads and faces, leaving only a “brush” mustache—like Hitler’s. Danylo pulled one of the three blades from his machine and hid it behind his belt. The young man carried it with him for three years, contemplating suicide every day.
“Fortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I thought about it every day. In the morning when I woke up, and in the evening when I went to bed. Every day I told myself and others: not today, because tomorrow is the exchange. With that thought, I lulled both myself and everyone I was with into a false sense of security,” says Daniel.
The young man is convinced that he wasn’t the only one who had such thoughts, but no one shared them. Daniel also didn’t tell anyone about the blade he’d hidden in his pocket, because he was afraid of pushing someone to do something irreversible.
“Or even worse—they’ll report you to the guards, and then you’ll be in for another round of hell,” the young man recalls.
They’ll throw you into a solitary confinement cell where you can’t sit, stand, or lie down—and after that, you won’t be able to walk at all.
Daniil Bulgakov
In March 2021, seven months after his imprisonment, Daniil was informed of his transfer from “Izolyatsia.” This gave him hope for release, since prisoners were always moved prior to an exchange. He and several other prisoners were taken to Colony No. 97 in the city of Makiivka, where militants had set up a “detention center” for political prisoners.
“They didn’t beat us anymore, like they did at ‘Izolyatsia,’ but another form of torture began—they tortured us with time. We were forgotten: no ‘investigators’ came, and no proceedings were taking place. We realized we were likely stuck there until the very end,” says Danylo.
Kherson, February 2022
Almost every spare moment, Kherson resident Oleksiy Sivak spends answering phone calls regarding the “Graduates” case, all while lighting a cigarette. On his left palm, he has a tattoo that reads, “I don’t smoke with my left hand,” which he got while at sea. He spent 17 years at sea, working in ship repair and shipbuilding. During that time, he traveled almost all over the world, but his favorite place has always been his hometown of Kherson.
There were times when sailors had to fend off pirate raids and were even taken hostage by them. However, nothing was as terrifying to him as the Russian occupation of his hometown. That’s why, according to Oleksii, the torment began as early as late February—six months before he was taken captive.
He has been married for over 20 years, and his family and home were the most important things to him. He wasn’t interested in politics and, despite what his fellow sailors said, didn’t believe that the Russians would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On February 25, 2022, he was supposed to set out on a new flight.
“Just two or three more flights, and I would have finished building my house,” Alexei says.
People were simply driving in their cars, and Russian soldiers were shooting at them from the runways.
Oleksiy Sivak
His family lives in the northwest of Kherson, a few kilometers from the infamous Chornobaivka. Explosions at the airfield alerted the couple to the Russian attack. They had no plan of action, only an emergency bag just in case. There was no way to leave: they could neither leave nor evacuate the wife’s mother, who was partially paralyzed. There were also no “green corridors” to guarantee a safe evacuation. Some residents of Kherson managed to leave via Snigurivka in the Mykolaiv region, but for others, the attempt to flee cost them their lives.
“I saw civilian cars both in the woods and right along the ring road, which were clearly trying to break through there. People were just driving their cars, and Russian soldiers were shooting at them from the woods. There were so many of them,” the man recalls.
“Drive the Russians Crazy with Yellow and Blue”
When the occupiers settled into Kherson, began running the show there, and tore down Ukrainian flags, Oleksii was outraged. There were more and more Russians in the city, and fighting them physically seemed impossible, so he decided to resort to psychological pressure. On May 9, as the occupiers celebrated their “Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” Oleksiy hung a banner reading “No to Rashism” at the entrance to the city. This was his first “psychological diversion.”
Later, together with other Kherson residents, he hung yellow-and-blue flags and effigies of the occupiers throughout the city and distributed leaflets featuring portraits of Ukrainian nationalists. Hanging a Ukrainian flag meant showing the Russians that they were on foreign soil and were not the masters here. In addition, Oleksiy wanted this to get on the invaders’ nerves and be etched into their memories forever.
Our idea was to drive the Russians crazy with the yellow and blue.
Oleksiy Sivak
There was a shortage of food in Kherson, and prices had skyrocketed. Pensioners were the most vulnerable; for them, basic foodstuffs had become an unaffordable luxury. To support them, Oleksiy and his friends set up a field kitchen where they cooked soups and porridge two or three times a week. More than 200 people always came to get food.
“We even joked that we had three meals a day,” recalls the Kherson resident.
The retirees whom Oleksiy fed later began to help him with his underground activities. True, at first they wanted to take radical action.
“At first, the grandmothers asked me for knives and grenades,” Oleksiy laughs as he recalls. “I gave them yellow-and-blue ribbons so they could hang them around the city.”
That’s how poems by Lina Kostenko, handwritten by a local pensioner, began to appear on the walls of buildings in Kherson.
“The Bohdan Khmelnytsky Unit”
Meanwhile, in Makiivka, Danylo heard about Russian victories on the front lines. Televisions were set up in the cells, showing Russian channels.
“All day long, we watched as rockets struck Ukraine. The guards quickly picked up on this and started feeding us a bit of disinformation, saying, ‘We’ve already entered Kyiv; we’re on our way to encircle Lviv,’ ” Danylo recounts, noting that he didn’t believe in such successes by the occupiers.
It was very painful. It felt like a sharp pain in my chest, making it hard to breathe and speak.
Danyil Bulgakov
However, watching the airstrikes on Ukraine live every day, the young man worried about his girlfriend, who had stayed behind in Kharkiv. A few months later, Danyil learned from a letter from a friend that Nastya had been killed when a Russian missile struck her home.
“It was very painful. I felt these emotions—you know, like a sharp pain in my chest—so much so that it was hard to breathe and speak. But life, for better or worse, goes on,” says Daniil.
Later, when the Russians began mobilizing prisoners, they also started offering prisoners the chance to join the aggressor’s army in exchange for amnesty, Russian citizenship, and 1.5 million rubles. So-called “investigators” urged them to join the newly formed “Bohdan Khmelnytskyi” unit, which was supposedly to consist of captured Ukrainian military personnel and civilians. Representatives of the Wagner Group also carried out this recruitment drive. However, none of the Ukrainians being held in the penal colony agreed.
“Before the full-scale war, we still thought, ‘If only someone would come and say, “Storm some airfield, and that’s it—you’ll be free through your blood.”’ But when you’re actually faced with that choice, everything looks completely different,” says Danylo.
He Accepted His Death
On the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day, another yellow-and-blue flag was raised in Kherson, hung by Oleksiy together with a neighbor. Upon learning of this, the Russians stormed into his neighbor’s house the very next day. Messages on his phone led them to Oleksiy as well. A day later, the occupiers came for him.
The interrogation and beating lasted several hours. During the search, the Russians found Ukrainian flags, “kapitoshki” (paint-filled balloons), and a Molotov cocktail that Alexei’s grandmother had once made. According to the Russians, the soldering iron and wire were intended for making homemade bombs.
The Russians then took the man to the canal, where, according to the story, he had drowned his phone after learning that his neighbor had been detained. Realizing that the device could not be found, the occupiers decided to stage Alexei’s execution. The man then accepted his death—the main thing was not to betray the dozens of other Kherson residents who had been helping him.
“They say that before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. That’s not true. All I saw when they pulled the bag off my head was the muzzle. Just darkness, and this thought: now the switch will click—and thank God. It’s all over,” recalls the Kherson resident.
The man was taken to a local detention center. In a three-person cell, he found himself with ten other people whom the occupiers—in their usual habit of twisting the meaning of words—had accused of “separatism.”
“The only upside was that they’d renovated the place before the occupation and covered the floor with plywood. At least we weren’t sleeping on concrete,” the man says.
“Anarchist”
Oleksiy can’t even count how many interrogations and beatings he endured while in captivity. When the Russians tried to extract information from him, he pretended to be “dumb”: instead of answering their questions, he went on and on about his life story.
During another interrogation, the Kherson native tried to convince the occupiers that he was a pacifist, but the word “anarchist” slipped out. That’s how he ended up with that nickname. The man admits: although it may sound heroic, it was actually terrifying.
“It was all through my nose and tears—not at all like it sounds,” Oleksiy recalls.
I wasn’t brave; I just didn’t care anymore. I went there to die.
Oleksiy Sivak
When the door opened, the prisoners had to turn their faces toward the wall and, on command, shout “Glory to Russia.” For the slightest “violation,” the entire cell could be brutally beaten—and that’s in addition to the beatings and abuse during regular interrogations.
According to the man from Kherson, the torture methods used by the Russians and their collaborators were varied and constantly “refined.” The torturers drew inspiration from foreign thrillers and replicated the abuses they’d seen in movies.
“Have you seen Hollywood action movies? They’ve seen them too,” Oleksiy says with regret.
He recalls the stories of other men who survived captivity. In different regions and at different times, the methods used by Russian torturers are the same. Starvation, beatings, electric shock torture, simulated drowning, and sexual violence—all these methods, according to Oleksiy, define a certain “school” of torture. Among them was, in particular, the “polygraph”—electrocution of the prisoners’ genitals.
“When they torture you like that, you lie there and cover your stomach with your knees. You pull your legs up, and your crotch opens up behind you, where they start beating you with their feet and sticks. I was lucky enough that I always fell on my back,” says Oleksiy.
The physical abuse was accompanied by psychological pressure. The Russians forced the prisoners to listen to others being tortured. To make sure their screams could be heard, they opened the windows of the torture chamber, located on the lower floor. At the same time, when interrogations were taking place, the window was closed.
The occupiers didn’t beat some prisoners, but they kept them in a constant state of fear. Oleksiy recalls one man with whom the Russians would simply talk during interrogations, and afterward would give him a bar of chocolate every time.
“He would come back to the cell pale and holding a chocolate bar. They beat us, but at least that was over and done with; he, on the other hand, was constantly waiting for it,” Oleksiy recalls.
In September 2022, the Russians announced a so-called “referendum” on the incorporation of the Kherson region into the Russian Federation. The prisoners were not only forced to participate in this sham vote, but were also told exactly which box on the ballot they had to check.
“I was surprised that there were only two options. I was walking along thinking I’d check the ‘abstain’ box. I asked the guard why there were only two options,” the man recounts.
This question was reported to the prison warden, who then tortured Oleksiy with a stun gun for several hours. He shocked the man until the stun gun ran out of power. Then he took out a second one and continued the torture until the second battery ran out.
“My entire spine is burned,” says Oleksiy.
In the second half of October, the Russians were preparing to flee Kherson. They began burning documents, removing weapons, electronics, and prisoners from the detention center. According to Oleksiy Sivak, even more terrifying than the psychological abuse and beatings was finding oneself on the list of those being “transferred”—that is, those whom the Russians would forcibly take to other places of detention. Typically, prisoners were “transferred” to more remote prisons in the occupied territories, as well as to Russia. Only a handful managed to return from there.
I finally felt the air and the sun.
Oleksiy Sivak
In the end, Oleksiy got lucky—there wasn’t enough room for him in the police van the Russians were using to transport the prisoners from Kherson. He admits that, like most of those who returned from captivity, he considers himself “lucky,” since a series of fortunate circumstances led to his release. They returned his passport and gave him 100 hryvnias. He was finally free.
“I walked out, and the city was alive—everything had become greener and brighter. That’s when I finally felt the air and the sun,” recalls the Kherson resident.
“I bought myself some ice cream.”
About a year has passed since the Russians withdrew from Kherson. Danylo, who had been held by the Russians in the Makiyivka penal colony for over two years by that point, had lost hope of being released. The young man decided to take drastic action—a hunger strike.
“I thought, I have nothing to lose; I’d already had enough of it all,” recalls Danylo.
Together with another prisoner, a Jordanian named Berem, the young man went on a hunger strike for two weeks. Miraculously, it worked. First, Berem was released, and the next day, the charges against Danylo were dropped. As he explains, during his detention, the militants were guided by the fictitious “laws” of the “DPR” group. These “laws,” under which Daniel was accused of espionage, “ceased to be in effect” after a pseudo-referendum was held on the group’s annexation into the Russian Federation. The occupiers had enacted Russian laws in Donetsk, and the Russians did not recognize the young man as a spy.
The “charges” were dropped. Danylo was released but barred from leaving the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast for six months. When he was finally set free, the young man had neither a home (the occupiers had illegally confiscated his apartment) nor a phone to contact his friends. All he had was 50 Russian rubles, which would have been enough for just one bus ride. He spent that money on what he had been dreaming of for all three years in captivity—food.
“I bought myself some ice cream and set off on foot toward Makiivka,” the young man says.
While remaining in Donetsk under a “travel ban,” he didn’t believe he would eventually be allowed to leave the occupied territory. He was afraid they would come for him again under a new “charge.” So Danylo tried to leave despite the ban. When he attempted to cross the Russian border, he was denied entry.
When the relatively safe escape route was cut off, the only option left was the shortest one—straight across the front line. The young man was ready to make his way across the fields to Avdiivka. However, back then, in August 2023, the Russians launched yet another offensive against the city, and due to intense fighting, Danylo’s plan fell through.
I was told to return to Donetsk and wait for the de-occupation.
The young man’s “criminal case” was closed at the end of 2023. When he was finally allowed to leave, he borrowed $2,000 and set off. The route to free Ukrainian territory ran through Russia, Belarus, and Poland. Upon reaching the Belarus-Poland border, Danyil was told that his passport was invalid. The Belarusians advised him to contact the Ukrainian Embassy in Minsk.
“No one thought there was a Ukrainian embassy in Belarus—but there is one!” Danylo says in surprise, continuing, “But there they told me to go back to Donetsk and wait for the de-occupation.”
Some visitors to the embassy told him about the temporarily closed “Mokrany-Domanove” border crossing in Volyn, which currently serves as a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainians returning from the occupied territories. There, Danylo had to undergo several hours of screening and eventually made it to the neutral zone. He had 1.5 kilometers left to the Ukrainian checkpoint, which he had to cover on foot.
“I called this road the Via Dolorosa (the name given to Jesus Christ’s path to the site of his crucifixion). And so I’m walking through a snow-covered pine forest—it’s January, after all—with snow up to my knees. No one drives there, no one walks there—just me, in a dense pine forest,” Daniel recalls.
Finally, anti-tank “hedgehogs” appeared among the trees. Daniel called out to the border guards and explained that he had returned from captivity. It seemed like he was almost there, at the finish line. However, instead of the long-awaited return, the young man received yet another refusal. The border guards told him to come back in the morning, when the “supervisor” would be there.
“Just don’t climb over the border now, because if you do, that’s a criminal offense,” the young man heard from the soldiers.
In the morning, he set out once again on his “Via Dolorosa,” making his way along the same snow-covered path toward the Ukrainian checkpoints. This time, after checking his papers, the border guards agreed to let him into Ukraine.
“Only one word flashed through my mind: ‘Finally,’” Daniel exhales.
“You realize that nobody needs you”
The border guards took the young man to Kovel, where he underwent a security check by the SBU and a polygraph test. The next day, he was free and could go anywhere. He didn’t want to return to Kharkiv because he didn’t want to be reminded every day of the shadow of his past life, in which he had a job, parties, friends, and a girlfriend.
“All of that is gone now, and I don’t want to go back to a place where there will only be ruins.”
Danylo Bulgakov
The young man moved to Irpin, where he rented an apartment. As an internally displaced person, he could have settled in public housing, but the conditions he was offered reminded him of a prison.
“After being held captive—where you live in a barracks the size of one and a half rooms with 20 people—they offer you the same kind of room—only now with 25 people. Seriously?” Daniel exclaims indignantly.
The young man says that the euphoria he felt upon returning to government-controlled territory faded within a month. His hope that someone was waiting for him here was instantly shattered when he heard at a government office: “You’d have been better off staying there; you’ve just caused a headache.”
“You’re in captivity and you believe the state will accept you. In reality, we don’t exist for the state. You realize that nobody needs you,” says Danylo.
Because his passport was invalid, the young man couldn’t find a job, and he accumulated a debt of 250,000 hryvnias. He later managed to receive 100,000 hryvnias in compensation from the government for his time in captivity.
Intergovernmental and charitable organizations helped Danyil resolve his other problems. He reached out to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which provided him with a laptop, civilian clothing, and paid for two months of rent. In addition, the organization referred him for an initial medical examination, during which he received some necessary medications—in particular, for asthma, which had worsened during his captivity.
Later, Daniel found another charitable organization—“Blue Bird”—which helped him restore his teeth, which had broken due to poor nutrition, a lack of vitamins, and a lack of sunlight. However, the charity was unable to cover the cost of implants for the teeth he had lost—whether they were pulled out by the occupiers or had fallen out due to his health condition.
After his captivity, the young man’s eyesight deteriorated, and he began wearing glasses. After his release, he weighed a critical 60 kilograms, but once he had access to food, he quickly gained weight.
“You see food, and every flavor just hits you like a fountain. That’s how I got a little hooked on energy drinks,” says Daniel.
After completing his treatment, as soon as he started to feel strong again, he immediately began looking for opportunities to join the army. Danyil tried to enlist more than 60 times—that’s roughly how many applications he submitted to serve in various units. While many of them agreed to accept him, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) rejected the unit commanders’ requests. In September 2024, he fought for the right to serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine in court, but the court also denied his request.
The “Graduates”
Network Danylo met Oleksiy Sivak, who by that time had already founded the “Network of Ukrainian Men Who Survived Captivity and Torture.” Not only did he take advantage of his organization’s support, but he also joined “Graduates” himself, becoming a co-coordinator of the project. Now he wants to carry on Oleksii’s work and help other men returning from Russian captivity.
For Oleksii, the “Network” became his reason for living. He recalls how he himself was released from captivity. He had no money, and immediately after Kherson’s liberation, he began receiving calls from the bank asking him to pay off his loan. He had lost his health while in captivity and had no means to pay for medical treatment.
No matter where he turned, they would just take his information, give him a package of pasta and some oil, and wish him luck.
Oleksiy Sivak
Through the prosecutor’s office, the man was offered rehabilitation from the International Organization for Migration. At that time, treatment was only available to victims of domestic violence and human trafficking—typically women and children. Oleksiy agreed, but once he arrived, it turned out that there was no urologist among the facility’s doctors who could help men who had suffered sexual violence.
“Rehabilitation is a bit of an overstatement. But they conducted a comprehensive examination there, gave me an IV drip, and prescribed antidepressants,” the man says.
Together with his wife, Oleksiy sought out the various forms of assistance he needed. When meeting with a small group of acquaintances at a coffee shop, he shared his experiences and the contacts he had used himself. Eventually, other men who had returned from captivity began reaching out for support as well. For over a year, Oleksiy helped former captives with paperwork, referred them to rehabilitation programs, and participated in consultations regarding interim reparations. At every stage, he faced resistance from the system. This is precisely what motivates him to continue his work.
“I’m building this organization despite everything. If we were getting proper help, I wouldn’t be doing this—I’d be rehabilitating myself and living my own life. But as it is, I have to fight to get help for these guys. And how many guys have returned without documents, without loved ones—without anything? And no one wants to deal with them,” says Oleksiy.
Today, “The Network” has over 400 “alumni” who survived captivity and sought help. The organization has begun collaborating with various foundations and charitable organizations. Its representatives participate in working groups during the drafting of laws concerning conflict-related sexual violence, reparations, and other issues, and advise government officials on how to communicate with people who have endured similar experiences.
In December 2024, the “Men’s Network” sent a letter to the UN. Speaking on behalf of those whose lives have been destroyed by Russian crimes, they demand that the organization’s head include Russia in the annual report on sexual violence in conflicts. Although the men are skeptical, they consider this step necessary, at the very least, to once again remind the international community of Russia’s crimes.
If the UN does not name Russia as a perpetrator, it will mean that the organization is becoming an accomplice to its crimes
the letter
states
This appeal confirms that, in defending their rights, “The Graduates” have done everything they could. They have rehabilitated themselves and begun helping others. They have not only taken advantage of support from the state and various foundations but have also created their own organization to provide assistance to victims systematically and on as large a scale as possible. Having survived captivity and torture, these men continue to fight for those who remain in captivity and advocate for the interests of those who have been released among Ukrainian lawmakers and international organizations.
Authors: Danylo Dubchak, Viktoria Kalimbet
One of the Ukrainians who managed to escape from Russian captivity is Oleksiy Sivak, a native of Kherson. He was released from captivity shortly before Ukrainian troops liberated the city.
Like thousands of Ukrainians in Russian torture chambers, he endured numerous beatings, torture, and sexual violence. After his release, he began looking for ways to recover. It turned out that most programs—whether run by the government or international foundations—were aimed at helping only female victims and children.
The lack of systematic support for civilian men who had suffered from Russia’s armed aggression prompted the Kherson resident to fight for it for himself and his acquaintances. In this way, he paved the way for assistance to reach more than 400 men who had survived captivity. To ensure that as many people as possible received the necessary assistance, Oleksiy Sivak founded a nonprofit organization, which he named “Network of Ukrainian Men Who Survived Captivity and Torture: ‘Graduates.’”
Daniil Bulgakov—a 27-year-old man who spent nearly three years in Russian captivity—turned to the “Network” for help. Daniil grew up in Donetsk; he was 16 years old when militants from the Russian-backed “DPR” group seized the city. After finishing school, he moved to Kharkiv, where he worked as a computer science teacher and lived happily with his girlfriend. However, just a few years later, he had to return to Donetsk to care for his ailing grandmother. In 2020, the Russians came for Daniil, accusing him of “espionage”. While in captivity, he endured torture, regular beatings, and starvation. It was there that he learned of the start of the full-scale invasion and the deaths of his loved ones. Danylo was only able to return to territory controlled by Ukraine in January 2024.
Oleksiy’s and Danylo’s stories are different. When the Russians occupied Donetsk, Oleksiy had ten years of experience as a sailor, while Danylo was studying to be a programmer at a technical college and wasn’t even of legal age yet. When Kherson was captured, Oleksii was about to set sail on his next voyage, while 25-year-old Danylo had already been in captivity for nearly two years. Oleksiy wanted to drive the occupiers crazy by hanging Ukrainian symbols in the streets, while in Donetsk, Danylo was simply taking care of his grandmother.
These two different stories are united by the men’s pro-Ukrainian stance, the torture they endured at the hands of the Russians for it, and the hardships they faced after their captivity.
Childhood in Donetsk
After his release from captivity, Danylo Bulgakov joined “The Graduates.” Working with the organization’s documents, he spends his days at the computer, drinks plenty of energy drinks, and every few days submits applications to join various units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Wearing an olive-green T-shirt with the word “Army” on it, Daniil calls himself a militarist and insists he has been one since his youth. Even as a child, he was convinced that there would be a war between Ukraine and Russia.
He hit me with a chair because I said that one day there would be American ships in Crimea to “beat you Russians.”
Daniil Bulgakov
Growing up in Donetsk, he attended a school where, in defiance of the law, Ukrainian was not taught, and on TV he could only watch Russian channels. To this day, he sometimes mispronounces the Ukrainian “g”: that’s why he says “ґroshi,” “vyhoda,” and “sledchiy organ.” However, despite this—and despite the views of his father, who is of Russian descent—Daniil has considered himself Ukrainian since childhood.
“He once hit me with a chair because I said that one day there would be American ships in Crimea to ‘beat you Russians,’” Danylo laughs, and immediately explains: his father didn’t mean him any harm, and after such arguments, they always made up quickly.
The young man recalls that he didn’t like Russia from childhood onward: he didn’t like either the country or Putin, who was popular in Ukraine at the time. Danylo remembers trips to his father’s homeland—the city of Bratsk in Siberia. There, he was struck by the wooden train cars embedded in the ground, in which people had lived for over 40 years without plumbing or electricity. Danyil also remembers the Russians he met in Donetsk. He didn’t like them either because of the condescending way they treated Ukrainians.
When militants from the “DNR” group seized power in the city in 2014, he was 16 years old. Once he came of age, Daniil moved with his girlfriend to Sloviansk, where he was able to earn a Ukrainian diploma, and then moved on to Kharkiv. There, he got a job as a computer science teacher at a school and, at the same time, worked for a company where he repaired electronics.
“You know those ads with a photo of Brad Pitt? Well, I used to show up instead of him,” the young man jokes.
“They push me to the ground and put a bag over my head”
A few years passed, and Danylo’s grandmother fell ill with cancer, so he returned to occupied Donetsk to care for her. A year later, in May 2020, she died. After registering the inherited apartment in his name, he planned to return to Kharkiv.
People in masks burst in, armed with automatic rifles; they pinned me to the ground and put a bag over my head.
Daniil Bulgakov
On August 19, the intercom rang. The voice on the other end identified itself as the police and said they were making the rounds. Daniil thought it was a routine check, but it turned out they had come specifically for him.
“As soon as I opened the door, masked men with automatic rifles burst in, pinned me to the ground, and put a bag over my head,” Daniil recalls.
He was taken to the “DPR Ministry of State Security,” a fictitious agency created by the militants. During the interrogation, the “MGB security forces” demanded that he sign a confession of espionage, a crime punishable by 15 years in prison. At first, Danyil refused and denied any ties to the Ukrainian intelligence services. However, this did not satisfy his captors. To get their way, they began beating him.
“They beat me until evening. They kept forcing me: ‘Sign it, sign it.’ I didn’t sign anything on the first day. Although now I think I should have just done it,” Danyil recalls.
That night, they handcuffed him to a radiator. In the morning, they returned with a “tapik”—a field telephone used for electric shock torture.
When they connected the wires to my genitals, I was ready to sign anything.
Daniil Bulgakov
In the end, under duress, he signed a “confession.” However, this did not stop the torture, and the torturers continued to shock the young man with electricity. In the morning, the abuse continued. Daniil was seated on a chair, a plastic bag was pulled over his head, his arms were pulled behind his back, and he was tied up. During the interrogation, the young man was asked the same questions and forced to repeat the same confessions they already had on paper. The nonsensical questions, the video recording, and the “spectators” who watched the torture all indicated that the interrogation was a show.
“Toward the end, as a parting gesture, they decided to file down two of my teeth just for show,” says Danylo.
To prevent him from closing his jaws, they shoved a metal spreader bar into his mouth. One of the torturers began filing down my teeth with a file. Only stumps remained of the two teeth, and six months later, my gums started to fester.
“I was beaten up, electrocuted, my mouth was bleeding—I didn’t understand anything; everything was spinning. They sat me down on a chair, and I just passed out right away,” the young man recounts his last memory before his imprisonment.
The “Izolyatsia”
Torture Chamber Danylo woke up in “Izolyatsia”—a prison set up in 2014 by “DPR” militants in a contemporary art center on the grounds of a former factory. The filthy cell was no larger than 20 square meters. Fifteen people were held there, with no ventilation and a shared toilet. The youngest person in the cell was 16 years old, the oldest—98. There weren’t enough sleeping spots—metal planks welded to the walls—for everyone, so they had to sleep two or three to a spot.
One and a half seconds to stand up, pull a bag over your head, and turn to face the wall
Daniil Bulgakov
Throughout the day, prisoners were forbidden to lie down, sleep, or exercise. They were allowed to sit, but only within the field of view of the surveillance camera. Not everyone could sit at the same time—there wasn’t enough space. Whenever someone entered the cell, everyone had to stand up.
“If you hear someone approaching the door or the locks opening, you have one and a half seconds to stand up, pull the bag over your head, and turn to face the wall. If anyone didn’t make it in time, the whole cell would end up in the ‘ukhnar,’ ” says Danylo, explaining the last term—a word understood only in the Donbas—“They’ll beat everyone half to death.”
The prisoners were not allowed to have anything but the clothes on their backs. On a diet of gray wheat porridge with two pieces of bread, which they received once a day, each prisoner lost more than 10 kilograms. They tied up their sagging clothes with various pieces of wire that some prisoners found while building bunkers and trenches for the occupiers. They were also brutally punished for this.
“Not today, because there’s an exchange tomorrow”
One day, the Russians ordered everyone “accused of espionage” to shave their heads and faces, leaving only a “brush” mustache—like Hitler’s. Danylo pulled one of the three blades from his machine and hid it behind his belt. The young man carried it with him for three years, contemplating suicide every day.
“Fortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I thought about it every day. In the morning when I woke up, and in the evening when I went to bed. Every day I told myself and others: not today, because tomorrow is the exchange. With that thought, I lulled both myself and everyone I was with into a false sense of security,” says Daniel.
The young man is convinced that he wasn’t the only one who had such thoughts, but no one shared them. Daniel also didn’t tell anyone about the blade he’d hidden in his pocket, because he was afraid of pushing someone to do something irreversible.
“Or even worse—they’ll report you to the guards, and then you’ll be in for another round of hell,” the young man recalls.
They’ll throw you into a solitary confinement cell where you can’t sit, stand, or lie down—and after that, you won’t be able to walk at all.
Daniil Bulgakov
In March 2021, seven months after his imprisonment, Daniil was informed of his transfer from “Izolyatsia.” This gave him hope for release, since prisoners were always moved prior to an exchange. He and several other prisoners were taken to Colony No. 97 in the city of Makiivka, where militants had set up a “detention center” for political prisoners.
“They didn’t beat us anymore, like they did at ‘Izolyatsia,’ but another form of torture began—they tortured us with time. We were forgotten: no ‘investigators’ came, and no proceedings were taking place. We realized we were likely stuck there until the very end,” says Danylo.
Kherson, February 2022
Almost every spare moment, Kherson resident Oleksiy Sivak spends answering phone calls regarding the “Graduates” case, all while lighting a cigarette. On his left palm, he has a tattoo that reads, “I don’t smoke with my left hand,” which he got while at sea. He spent 17 years at sea, working in ship repair and shipbuilding. During that time, he traveled almost all over the world, but his favorite place has always been his hometown of Kherson.
There were times when sailors had to fend off pirate raids and were even taken hostage by them. However, nothing was as terrifying to him as the Russian occupation of his hometown. That’s why, according to Oleksii, the torment began as early as late February—six months before he was taken captive.
He has been married for over 20 years, and his family and home were the most important things to him. He wasn’t interested in politics and, despite what his fellow sailors said, didn’t believe that the Russians would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On February 25, 2022, he was supposed to set out on a new flight.
“Just two or three more flights, and I would have finished building my house,” Alexei says.
People were simply driving in their cars, and Russian soldiers were shooting at them from the runways.
Oleksiy Sivak
His family lives in the northwest of Kherson, a few kilometers from the infamous Chornobaivka. Explosions at the airfield alerted the couple to the Russian attack. They had no plan of action, only an emergency bag just in case. There was no way to leave: they could neither leave nor evacuate the wife’s mother, who was partially paralyzed. There were also no “green corridors” to guarantee a safe evacuation. Some residents of Kherson managed to leave via Snigurivka in the Mykolaiv region, but for others, the attempt to flee cost them their lives.
“I saw civilian cars both in the woods and right along the ring road, which were clearly trying to break through there. People were just driving their cars, and Russian soldiers were shooting at them from the woods. There were so many of them,” the man recalls.
“Drive the Russians Crazy with Yellow and Blue”
When the occupiers settled into Kherson, began running the show there, and tore down Ukrainian flags, Oleksii was outraged. There were more and more Russians in the city, and fighting them physically seemed impossible, so he decided to resort to psychological pressure. On May 9, as the occupiers celebrated their “Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” Oleksiy hung a banner reading “No to Rashism” at the entrance to the city. This was his first “psychological diversion.”
Later, together with other Kherson residents, he hung yellow-and-blue flags and effigies of the occupiers throughout the city and distributed leaflets featuring portraits of Ukrainian nationalists. Hanging a Ukrainian flag meant showing the Russians that they were on foreign soil and were not the masters here. In addition, Oleksiy wanted this to get on the invaders’ nerves and be etched into their memories forever.
Our idea was to drive the Russians crazy with the yellow and blue.
Oleksiy Sivak
There was a shortage of food in Kherson, and prices had skyrocketed. Pensioners were the most vulnerable; for them, basic foodstuffs had become an unaffordable luxury. To support them, Oleksiy and his friends set up a field kitchen where they cooked soups and porridge two or three times a week. More than 200 people always came to get food.
“We even joked that we had three meals a day,” recalls the Kherson resident.
The retirees whom Oleksiy fed later began to help him with his underground activities. True, at first they wanted to take radical action.
“At first, the grandmothers asked me for knives and grenades,” Oleksiy laughs as he recalls. “I gave them yellow-and-blue ribbons so they could hang them around the city.”
That’s how poems by Lina Kostenko, handwritten by a local pensioner, began to appear on the walls of buildings in Kherson.
“The Bohdan Khmelnytsky Unit”
Meanwhile, in Makiivka, Danylo heard about Russian victories on the front lines. Televisions were set up in the cells, showing Russian channels.
“All day long, we watched as rockets struck Ukraine. The guards quickly picked up on this and started feeding us a bit of disinformation, saying, ‘We’ve already entered Kyiv; we’re on our way to encircle Lviv,’ ” Danylo recounts, noting that he didn’t believe in such successes by the occupiers.
It was very painful. It felt like a sharp pain in my chest, making it hard to breathe and speak.
Danyil Bulgakov
However, watching the airstrikes on Ukraine live every day, the young man worried about his girlfriend, who had stayed behind in Kharkiv. A few months later, Danyil learned from a letter from a friend that Nastya had been killed when a Russian missile struck her home.
“It was very painful. I felt these emotions—you know, like a sharp pain in my chest—so much so that it was hard to breathe and speak. But life, for better or worse, goes on,” says Daniil.
Later, when the Russians began mobilizing prisoners, they also started offering prisoners the chance to join the aggressor’s army in exchange for amnesty, Russian citizenship, and 1.5 million rubles. So-called “investigators” urged them to join the newly formed “Bohdan Khmelnytskyi” unit, which was supposedly to consist of captured Ukrainian military personnel and civilians. Representatives of the Wagner Group also carried out this recruitment drive. However, none of the Ukrainians being held in the penal colony agreed.
“Before the full-scale war, we still thought, ‘If only someone would come and say, “Storm some airfield, and that’s it—you’ll be free through your blood.”’ But when you’re actually faced with that choice, everything looks completely different,” says Danylo.
He Accepted His Death
On the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day, another yellow-and-blue flag was raised in Kherson, hung by Oleksiy together with a neighbor. Upon learning of this, the Russians stormed into his neighbor’s house the very next day. Messages on his phone led them to Oleksiy as well. A day later, the occupiers came for him.
The interrogation and beating lasted several hours. During the search, the Russians found Ukrainian flags, “kapitoshki” (paint-filled balloons), and a Molotov cocktail that Alexei’s grandmother had once made. According to the Russians, the soldering iron and wire were intended for making homemade bombs.
The Russians then took the man to the canal, where, according to the story, he had drowned his phone after learning that his neighbor had been detained. Realizing that the device could not be found, the occupiers decided to stage Alexei’s execution. The man then accepted his death—the main thing was not to betray the dozens of other Kherson residents who had been helping him.
“They say that before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. That’s not true. All I saw when they pulled the bag off my head was the muzzle. Just darkness, and this thought: now the switch will click—and thank God. It’s all over,” recalls the Kherson resident.
The man was taken to a local detention center. In a three-person cell, he found himself with ten other people whom the occupiers—in their usual habit of twisting the meaning of words—had accused of “separatism.”
“The only upside was that they’d renovated the place before the occupation and covered the floor with plywood. At least we weren’t sleeping on concrete,” the man says.
“Anarchist”
Oleksiy can’t even count how many interrogations and beatings he endured while in captivity. When the Russians tried to extract information from him, he pretended to be “dumb”: instead of answering their questions, he went on and on about his life story.
During another interrogation, the Kherson native tried to convince the occupiers that he was a pacifist, but the word “anarchist” slipped out. That’s how he ended up with that nickname. The man admits: although it may sound heroic, it was actually terrifying.
“It was all through my nose and tears—not at all like it sounds,” Oleksiy recalls.
I wasn’t brave; I just didn’t care anymore. I went there to die.
Oleksiy Sivak
When the door opened, the prisoners had to turn their faces toward the wall and, on command, shout “Glory to Russia.” For the slightest “violation,” the entire cell could be brutally beaten—and that’s in addition to the beatings and abuse during regular interrogations.
According to the man from Kherson, the torture methods used by the Russians and their collaborators were varied and constantly “refined.” The torturers drew inspiration from foreign thrillers and replicated the abuses they’d seen in movies.
“Have you seen Hollywood action movies? They’ve seen them too,” Oleksiy says with regret.
He recalls the stories of other men who survived captivity. In different regions and at different times, the methods used by Russian torturers are the same. Starvation, beatings, electric shock torture, simulated drowning, and sexual violence—all these methods, according to Oleksiy, define a certain “school” of torture. Among them was, in particular, the “polygraph”—electrocution of the prisoners’ genitals.
“When they torture you like that, you lie there and cover your stomach with your knees. You pull your legs up, and your crotch opens up behind you, where they start beating you with their feet and sticks. I was lucky enough that I always fell on my back,” says Oleksiy.
The physical abuse was accompanied by psychological pressure. The Russians forced the prisoners to listen to others being tortured. To make sure their screams could be heard, they opened the windows of the torture chamber, located on the lower floor. At the same time, when interrogations were taking place, the window was closed.
The occupiers didn’t beat some prisoners, but they kept them in a constant state of fear. Oleksiy recalls one man with whom the Russians would simply talk during interrogations, and afterward would give him a bar of chocolate every time.
“He would come back to the cell pale and holding a chocolate bar. They beat us, but at least that was over and done with; he, on the other hand, was constantly waiting for it,” Oleksiy recalls.
In September 2022, the Russians announced a so-called “referendum” on the incorporation of the Kherson region into the Russian Federation. The prisoners were not only forced to participate in this sham vote, but were also told exactly which box on the ballot they had to check.
“I was surprised that there were only two options. I was walking along thinking I’d check the ‘abstain’ box. I asked the guard why there were only two options,” the man recounts.
This question was reported to the prison warden, who then tortured Oleksiy with a stun gun for several hours. He shocked the man until the stun gun ran out of power. Then he took out a second one and continued the torture until the second battery ran out.
“My entire spine is burned,” says Oleksiy.
In the second half of October, the Russians were preparing to flee Kherson. They began burning documents, removing weapons, electronics, and prisoners from the detention center. According to Oleksiy Sivak, even more terrifying than the psychological abuse and beatings was finding oneself on the list of those being “transferred”—that is, those whom the Russians would forcibly take to other places of detention. Typically, prisoners were “transferred” to more remote prisons in the occupied territories, as well as to Russia. Only a handful managed to return from there.
I finally felt the air and the sun.
Oleksiy Sivak
In the end, Oleksiy got lucky—there wasn’t enough room for him in the police van the Russians were using to transport the prisoners from Kherson. He admits that, like most of those who returned from captivity, he considers himself “lucky,” since a series of fortunate circumstances led to his release. They returned his passport and gave him 100 hryvnias. He was finally free.
“I walked out, and the city was alive—everything had become greener and brighter. That’s when I finally felt the air and the sun,” recalls the Kherson resident.
“I bought myself some ice cream.”
About a year has passed since the Russians withdrew from Kherson. Danylo, who had been held by the Russians in the Makiyivka penal colony for over two years by that point, had lost hope of being released. The young man decided to take drastic action—a hunger strike.
“I thought, I have nothing to lose; I’d already had enough of it all,” recalls Danylo.
Together with another prisoner, a Jordanian named Berem, the young man went on a hunger strike for two weeks. Miraculously, it worked. First, Berem was released, and the next day, the charges against Danylo were dropped. As he explains, during his detention, the militants were guided by the fictitious “laws” of the “DPR” group. These “laws,” under which Daniel was accused of espionage, “ceased to be in effect” after a pseudo-referendum was held on the group’s annexation into the Russian Federation. The occupiers had enacted Russian laws in Donetsk, and the Russians did not recognize the young man as a spy.
The “charges” were dropped. Danylo was released but barred from leaving the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast for six months. When he was finally set free, the young man had neither a home (the occupiers had illegally confiscated his apartment) nor a phone to contact his friends. All he had was 50 Russian rubles, which would have been enough for just one bus ride. He spent that money on what he had been dreaming of for all three years in captivity—food.
“I bought myself some ice cream and set off on foot toward Makiivka,” the young man says.
While remaining in Donetsk under a “travel ban,” he didn’t believe he would eventually be allowed to leave the occupied territory. He was afraid they would come for him again under a new “charge.” So Danylo tried to leave despite the ban. When he attempted to cross the Russian border, he was denied entry.
When the relatively safe escape route was cut off, the only option left was the shortest one—straight across the front line. The young man was ready to make his way across the fields to Avdiivka. However, back then, in August 2023, the Russians launched yet another offensive against the city, and due to intense fighting, Danylo’s plan fell through.
I was told to return to Donetsk and wait for the de-occupation.
The young man’s “criminal case” was closed at the end of 2023. When he was finally allowed to leave, he borrowed $2,000 and set off. The route to free Ukrainian territory ran through Russia, Belarus, and Poland. Upon reaching the Belarus-Poland border, Danyil was told that his passport was invalid. The Belarusians advised him to contact the Ukrainian Embassy in Minsk.
“No one thought there was a Ukrainian embassy in Belarus—but there is one!” Danylo says in surprise, continuing, “But there they told me to go back to Donetsk and wait for the de-occupation.”
Some visitors to the embassy told him about the temporarily closed “Mokrany-Domanove” border crossing in Volyn, which currently serves as a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainians returning from the occupied territories. There, Danylo had to undergo several hours of screening and eventually made it to the neutral zone. He had 1.5 kilometers left to the Ukrainian checkpoint, which he had to cover on foot.
“I called this road the Via Dolorosa (the name given to Jesus Christ’s path to the site of his crucifixion). And so I’m walking through a snow-covered pine forest—it’s January, after all—with snow up to my knees. No one drives there, no one walks there—just me, in a dense pine forest,” Daniel recalls.
Finally, anti-tank “hedgehogs” appeared among the trees. Daniel called out to the border guards and explained that he had returned from captivity. It seemed like he was almost there, at the finish line. However, instead of the long-awaited return, the young man received yet another refusal. The border guards told him to come back in the morning, when the “supervisor” would be there.
“Just don’t climb over the border now, because if you do, that’s a criminal offense,” the young man heard from the soldiers.
In the morning, he set out once again on his “Via Dolorosa,” making his way along the same snow-covered path toward the Ukrainian checkpoints. This time, after checking his papers, the border guards agreed to let him into Ukraine.
“Only one word flashed through my mind: ‘Finally,’” Daniel exhales.
“You realize that nobody needs you”
The border guards took the young man to Kovel, where he underwent a security check by the SBU and a polygraph test. The next day, he was free and could go anywhere. He didn’t want to return to Kharkiv because he didn’t want to be reminded every day of the shadow of his past life, in which he had a job, parties, friends, and a girlfriend.
“All of that is gone now, and I don’t want to go back to a place where there will only be ruins.”
Danylo Bulgakov
The young man moved to Irpin, where he rented an apartment. As an internally displaced person, he could have settled in public housing, but the conditions he was offered reminded him of a prison.
“After being held captive—where you live in a barracks the size of one and a half rooms with 20 people—they offer you the same kind of room—only now with 25 people. Seriously?” Daniel exclaims indignantly.
The young man says that the euphoria he felt upon returning to government-controlled territory faded within a month. His hope that someone was waiting for him here was instantly shattered when he heard at a government office: “You’d have been better off staying there; you’ve just caused a headache.”
“You’re in captivity and you believe the state will accept you. In reality, we don’t exist for the state. You realize that nobody needs you,” says Danylo.
Because his passport was invalid, the young man couldn’t find a job, and he accumulated a debt of 250,000 hryvnias. He later managed to receive 100,000 hryvnias in compensation from the government for his time in captivity.
Intergovernmental and charitable organizations helped Danyil resolve his other problems. He reached out to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which provided him with a laptop, civilian clothing, and paid for two months of rent. In addition, the organization referred him for an initial medical examination, during which he received some necessary medications—in particular, for asthma, which had worsened during his captivity.
Later, Daniel found another charitable organization—“Blue Bird”—which helped him restore his teeth, which had broken due to poor nutrition, a lack of vitamins, and a lack of sunlight. However, the charity was unable to cover the cost of implants for the teeth he had lost—whether they were pulled out by the occupiers or had fallen out due to his health condition.
After his captivity, the young man’s eyesight deteriorated, and he began wearing glasses. After his release, he weighed a critical 60 kilograms, but once he had access to food, he quickly gained weight.
“You see food, and every flavor just hits you like a fountain. That’s how I got a little hooked on energy drinks,” says Daniel.
After completing his treatment, as soon as he started to feel strong again, he immediately began looking for opportunities to join the army. Danyil tried to enlist more than 60 times—that’s roughly how many applications he submitted to serve in various units. While many of them agreed to accept him, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) rejected the unit commanders’ requests. In September 2024, he fought for the right to serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine in court, but the court also denied his request.
The “Graduates”
Network Danylo met Oleksiy Sivak, who by that time had already founded the “Network of Ukrainian Men Who Survived Captivity and Torture.” Not only did he take advantage of his organization’s support, but he also joined “Graduates” himself, becoming a co-coordinator of the project. Now he wants to carry on Oleksii’s work and help other men returning from Russian captivity.
For Oleksii, the “Network” became his reason for living. He recalls how he himself was released from captivity. He had no money, and immediately after Kherson’s liberation, he began receiving calls from the bank asking him to pay off his loan. He had lost his health while in captivity and had no means to pay for medical treatment.
No matter where he turned, they would just take his information, give him a package of pasta and some oil, and wish him luck.
Oleksiy Sivak
Through the prosecutor’s office, the man was offered rehabilitation from the International Organization for Migration. At that time, treatment was only available to victims of domestic violence and human trafficking—typically women and children. Oleksiy agreed, but once he arrived, it turned out that there was no urologist among the facility’s doctors who could help men who had suffered sexual violence.
“Rehabilitation is a bit of an overstatement. But they conducted a comprehensive examination there, gave me an IV drip, and prescribed antidepressants,” the man says.
Together with his wife, Oleksiy sought out the various forms of assistance he needed. When meeting with a small group of acquaintances at a coffee shop, he shared his experiences and the contacts he had used himself. Eventually, other men who had returned from captivity began reaching out for support as well. For over a year, Oleksiy helped former captives with paperwork, referred them to rehabilitation programs, and participated in consultations regarding interim reparations. At every stage, he faced resistance from the system. This is precisely what motivates him to continue his work.
“I’m building this organization despite everything. If we were getting proper help, I wouldn’t be doing this—I’d be rehabilitating myself and living my own life. But as it is, I have to fight to get help for these guys. And how many guys have returned without documents, without loved ones—without anything? And no one wants to deal with them,” says Oleksiy.
Today, “The Network” has over 400 “alumni” who survived captivity and sought help. The organization has begun collaborating with various foundations and charitable organizations. Its representatives participate in working groups during the drafting of laws concerning conflict-related sexual violence, reparations, and other issues, and advise government officials on how to communicate with people who have endured similar experiences.
In December 2024, the “Men’s Network” sent a letter to the UN. Speaking on behalf of those whose lives have been destroyed by Russian crimes, they demand that the organization’s head include Russia in the annual report on sexual violence in conflicts. Although the men are skeptical, they consider this step necessary, at the very least, to once again remind the international community of Russia’s crimes.
If the UN does not name Russia as a perpetrator, it will mean that the organization is becoming an accomplice to its crimes
the letter
states
This appeal confirms that, in defending their rights, “The Graduates” have done everything they could. They have rehabilitated themselves and begun helping others. They have not only taken advantage of support from the state and various foundations but have also created their own organization to provide assistance to victims systematically and on as large a scale as possible. Having survived captivity and torture, these men continue to fight for those who remain in captivity and advocate for the interests of those who have been released among Ukrainian lawmakers and international organizations.
This is an automatic translation generated by DeepL.