"They let me sign it, but not read it—maybe that was my death sentence."
Source: MIPL
The Russians detained Iryna Dubchenko in the village of Rozyvka, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, which was occupied in late February. She was threatened with a “people’s court” in Donetsk and serving her sentence in Russia.
To save a private in the Aidar
Battalion
Iryna Dubchenko moved from Zaporizhzhia with her young daughter back in 2020 to care for her paralyzed grandmother. In early February 2022, Iryna’s mother took the child to live with her in Zaporizhzhia. So when the Russian army and representatives of the so-called “DPR” terrorist groups under its control entered the village on March 4, the child was safe. Iryna, however, could no longer leave the occupied territory.
She recalls that initially, on February 27, Ukrainian troops—about two thousand of them—entered Rozyvka. Some of them were wounded. Some of their equipment was destroyed. On March 2, fighting broke out in the village. “The forces were unequal; there were many dead and wounded, and our troops were forced to retreat,” says Iryna.
By that time, the village had no cell service or electricity. Food supplies were running out quickly, and local stores had been looted. Residents tried to help one another by sharing food. Later, Iryna learned that wounded Ukrainian soldiers had been left behind in the village.
“I found out where one of them was. The house where he was hiding had no heating, and it was freezing outside. My house, on the other hand, had a wood-burning stove and I still had some food left, so I decided to take him in,” Iryna continues.
The soldier Iryna set out to rescue was named Serhiy; he turned out to be a fighter with the “Aidar” battalion. During the battle, he sustained severe injuries—a broken leg, a shrapnel wound to his foot, and a through-and-through wound to his right arm. Taking him to the hospital was too risky. She had to provide medical care at home, without electricity and with only a minimal supply of medications. There were still doctors in the village who were able to examine him, and he began to recover.
Iryna understood that one day representatives of the occupying authorities might come to her house, so she and Serhiy agreed to pretend they were a married couple.
“Later, we wanted to find a way to get him out of the city,” the journalist says. “It’s 180 km from Rozyvka to Zaporizhzhia. But there are 50 checkpoints along that road. At each one, men are thoroughly searched: they’re made to undress, and they look for tattoos, gunshot wounds, and injuries. And even though Serhiy had injuries, we still came up with a plan to get him out safely. However, it wasn’t meant to be—on March 26, they came to my house after all.”
Iryna is convinced that she was betrayed by local collaborators who had sided with Russia from the very first days of the occupation.
Men in military uniforms bearing the letters “DNR” burst in with automatic rifles and forced Serhiy to undress.
“They saw his wounds. I tried to explain that he was coming from Volnovakha and had been wounded there, but they rudely ordered me to shut up. Eventually, they took Serhiy away. I didn’t know what to do. I took off all my gold jewelry, gathered all the cash I had, and ran to the ‘command post.’ I wanted to ransom him. However, Serhiy wasn’t there. I offered money—they wouldn’t take it. Instead, they said they knew about my support for the Ukrainian army and that I was a journalist. They threatened to detain me. I didn’t think it was that serious. I asked them to exchange me for him. They replied, “Just try to leave the house at all—we’ll be there in two hours, and we’ll talk,” Irina recalls. “I ran home, not knowing what to do.” I called the police and the SBU—no one answered. I called my sister, who didn’t know I was hiding a soldier. She told me to hide and wait. But I couldn’t leave my grandmother, and besides, I was convinced they’d find me anyway.”
“They Were Interested in the Weapons”
As soon as Iryna returned home, they came for her. They told her to go out into the yard to talk. My phone and passport were left inside the house.
“My grandmother was lying in the house. Electricity had already been restored in the village, so the lights were on. I hadn’t locked the house; I thought I’d only be gone for a short while. I asked where Serhiy was. And they said, ‘Do you want to see him?’ I said yes. They put me in a car—a white ‘Niva’ with a ‘Z’ on it—and we drove off… for two weeks,” the woman recalls.
Irina was taken to the “command post” in the village of Nikolskoye in the Donetsk region, 20 km from Rozyvka. There she saw Serhiy.
“They showed him to me twice. The first time—before his interrogation—he was in handcuffs and had been beaten. The second time—after the interrogation—he was sitting in a chair; I realized he could no longer stand up, and it was clear from his face how he’d been interrogated.”
Irina was also taken in for questioning.
“I thought they’d talk to me and let me go. The ‘commandant’ acted normally; he asked if I smoked and even offered to let me take some cigarettes with me. I declined. But it turned out he knew where they were taking me.”
Then they put Irina in a car. They brought her to the local police station, where they conducted another interrogation in the “good cop, bad cop” style.
“They took my fingerprints and photographed me. They gave me a document to sign. I asked to read it—what if I was signing my own death warrant?—but they wouldn’t let me. To be honest, it was psychologically difficult. They were poking me in the back with a rifle. You don’t know what’s going through that guard’s mind—could he just kill me like that?! Nobody knows where I am. To everyone, I’ve just disappeared,” says Iryna. “Then we went down to the first floor. I was ordered to take the laces out of my shoes. They opened the cell. It was a room with bars on the windows. And inside—17 men. And I was the only woman. Later, they brought two more here. One was wounded, the other was drunk.”
Iryna spent the night in the cell. In the morning, they took her for questioning again: “They wanted to know where the weapons were hidden, but I couldn’t tell them anything. They told me that since I wasn’t of interest to them, I was being transferred to Starobesheve. I begged them to let me go home, because my grandmother is paralyzed, she’s hungry, and it’s cold in the house. But no one listened to me. I promised not to leave the house. They told me, ‘You have this concept of a personal commitment. We don’t have that here, so you’re going to Starobesheve.’”
The soldiers holding Irina captive believed she was the wife of a fighter from the “Aidar” battalion, so they gave her the call sign “Aidarivka” and addressed her only by that name the entire time.
“When they were putting us on the bus to transport us to another detention site, the soldier who was escorting me nearly broke my arm when he heard that I was the wife of an Aidar fighter. I told him it hurt, and he replied, ‘Does that hurt you? You were the ones shooting our children in Donetsk.’ That’s when I realized it was pointless to talk to these people,” says Iryna Dubchenko.
“At least there are no bedbugs in the mattresses”
Starobesheve is a district center in the Donetsk region, located 30 km from Donetsk. There, Iryna was held in a temporary detention center. It’s a three-story building; the top two floors house the district police department, and the bottom floor is a basement divided into eight cells. Men and women were held separately here.
“The cells are about 12 square meters—the girls and I roughly measured them. Two metal beds, a metal table bolted to the floor. The mattresses were just awful; the guys in the cell had fleas and bedbugs living in theirs, so we were actually lucky,” recalls the former detainee. “There’s a toilet, a sink, and a surveillance camera above the toilet. When I was first brought in, there were three of us in the cell, and later there were eight. Three of us slept on the bed, and some slept on the table.”
In the cell with Iryna were civilian women; some had been detained because they were the wives of military personnel, others because of their volunteer work. They weren’t subjected to physical violence, but the female military personnel were treated brutally.
“They were beaten severely. Among them was a female cook; she was beaten very badly. They also brought in a beaten female police officer. As it later turned out, this was done by a “policewoman” from the Donetsk People’s Republic who had once studied at the same university as her victim. She beat her while saying, ‘This is for our Donetsk,’” says Iryna.
Iryna Dubchenko was released on April 11. For security reasons, she cannot disclose the details of her rescue at this time. She only adds: “Since 2014, I’ve had many friends in the military. In Rozyvka, we fed them varenyky with cherries and boiled corn. After I was detained, my sister asked them to help find me.”
—
——
This article was prepared by the Media Initiative for Human Rights with the support of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.
The Russians detained Iryna Dubchenko in the village of Rozyvka, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, which was occupied in late February. She was threatened with a “people’s court” in Donetsk and serving her sentence in Russia.
To save a private in the Aidar
Battalion
Iryna Dubchenko moved from Zaporizhzhia with her young daughter back in 2020 to care for her paralyzed grandmother. In early February 2022, Iryna’s mother took the child to live with her in Zaporizhzhia. So when the Russian army and representatives of the so-called “DPR” terrorist groups under its control entered the village on March 4, the child was safe. Iryna, however, could no longer leave the occupied territory.
She recalls that initially, on February 27, Ukrainian troops—about two thousand of them—entered Rozyvka. Some of them were wounded. Some of their equipment was destroyed. On March 2, fighting broke out in the village. “The forces were unequal; there were many dead and wounded, and our troops were forced to retreat,” says Iryna.
By that time, the village had no cell service or electricity. Food supplies were running out quickly, and local stores had been looted. Residents tried to help one another by sharing food. Later, Iryna learned that wounded Ukrainian soldiers had been left behind in the village.
“I found out where one of them was. The house where he was hiding had no heating, and it was freezing outside. My house, on the other hand, had a wood-burning stove and I still had some food left, so I decided to take him in,” Iryna continues.
The soldier Iryna set out to rescue was named Serhiy; he turned out to be a fighter with the “Aidar” battalion. During the battle, he sustained severe injuries—a broken leg, a shrapnel wound to his foot, and a through-and-through wound to his right arm. Taking him to the hospital was too risky. She had to provide medical care at home, without electricity and with only a minimal supply of medications. There were still doctors in the village who were able to examine him, and he began to recover.
Iryna understood that one day representatives of the occupying authorities might come to her house, so she and Serhiy agreed to pretend they were a married couple.
“Later, we wanted to find a way to get him out of the city,” the journalist says. “It’s 180 km from Rozyvka to Zaporizhzhia. But there are 50 checkpoints along that road. At each one, men are thoroughly searched: they’re made to undress, and they look for tattoos, gunshot wounds, and injuries. And even though Serhiy had injuries, we still came up with a plan to get him out safely. However, it wasn’t meant to be—on March 26, they came to my house after all.”
Iryna is convinced that she was betrayed by local collaborators who had sided with Russia from the very first days of the occupation.
Men in military uniforms bearing the letters “DNR” burst in with automatic rifles and forced Serhiy to undress.
“They saw his wounds. I tried to explain that he was coming from Volnovakha and had been wounded there, but they rudely ordered me to shut up. Eventually, they took Serhiy away. I didn’t know what to do. I took off all my gold jewelry, gathered all the cash I had, and ran to the ‘command post.’ I wanted to ransom him. However, Serhiy wasn’t there. I offered money—they wouldn’t take it. Instead, they said they knew about my support for the Ukrainian army and that I was a journalist. They threatened to detain me. I didn’t think it was that serious. I asked them to exchange me for him. They replied, “Just try to leave the house at all—we’ll be there in two hours, and we’ll talk,” Irina recalls. “I ran home, not knowing what to do.” I called the police and the SBU—no one answered. I called my sister, who didn’t know I was hiding a soldier. She told me to hide and wait. But I couldn’t leave my grandmother, and besides, I was convinced they’d find me anyway.”
“They Were Interested in the Weapons”
As soon as Iryna returned home, they came for her. They told her to go out into the yard to talk. My phone and passport were left inside the house.
“My grandmother was lying in the house. Electricity had already been restored in the village, so the lights were on. I hadn’t locked the house; I thought I’d only be gone for a short while. I asked where Serhiy was. And they said, ‘Do you want to see him?’ I said yes. They put me in a car—a white ‘Niva’ with a ‘Z’ on it—and we drove off… for two weeks,” the woman recalls.
Irina was taken to the “command post” in the village of Nikolskoye in the Donetsk region, 20 km from Rozyvka. There she saw Serhiy.
“They showed him to me twice. The first time—before his interrogation—he was in handcuffs and had been beaten. The second time—after the interrogation—he was sitting in a chair; I realized he could no longer stand up, and it was clear from his face how he’d been interrogated.”
Irina was also taken in for questioning.
“I thought they’d talk to me and let me go. The ‘commandant’ acted normally; he asked if I smoked and even offered to let me take some cigarettes with me. I declined. But it turned out he knew where they were taking me.”
Then they put Irina in a car. They brought her to the local police station, where they conducted another interrogation in the “good cop, bad cop” style.
“They took my fingerprints and photographed me. They gave me a document to sign. I asked to read it—what if I was signing my own death warrant?—but they wouldn’t let me. To be honest, it was psychologically difficult. They were poking me in the back with a rifle. You don’t know what’s going through that guard’s mind—could he just kill me like that?! Nobody knows where I am. To everyone, I’ve just disappeared,” says Iryna. “Then we went down to the first floor. I was ordered to take the laces out of my shoes. They opened the cell. It was a room with bars on the windows. And inside—17 men. And I was the only woman. Later, they brought two more here. One was wounded, the other was drunk.”
Iryna spent the night in the cell. In the morning, they took her for questioning again: “They wanted to know where the weapons were hidden, but I couldn’t tell them anything. They told me that since I wasn’t of interest to them, I was being transferred to Starobesheve. I begged them to let me go home, because my grandmother is paralyzed, she’s hungry, and it’s cold in the house. But no one listened to me. I promised not to leave the house. They told me, ‘You have this concept of a personal commitment. We don’t have that here, so you’re going to Starobesheve.’”
The soldiers holding Irina captive believed she was the wife of a fighter from the “Aidar” battalion, so they gave her the call sign “Aidarivka” and addressed her only by that name the entire time.
“When they were putting us on the bus to transport us to another detention site, the soldier who was escorting me nearly broke my arm when he heard that I was the wife of an Aidar fighter. I told him it hurt, and he replied, ‘Does that hurt you? You were the ones shooting our children in Donetsk.’ That’s when I realized it was pointless to talk to these people,” says Iryna Dubchenko.
“At least there are no bedbugs in the mattresses”
Starobesheve is a district center in the Donetsk region, located 30 km from Donetsk. There, Iryna was held in a temporary detention center. It’s a three-story building; the top two floors house the district police department, and the bottom floor is a basement divided into eight cells. Men and women were held separately here.
“The cells are about 12 square meters—the girls and I roughly measured them. Two metal beds, a metal table bolted to the floor. The mattresses were just awful; the guys in the cell had fleas and bedbugs living in theirs, so we were actually lucky,” recalls the former detainee. “There’s a toilet, a sink, and a surveillance camera above the toilet. When I was first brought in, there were three of us in the cell, and later there were eight. Three of us slept on the bed, and some slept on the table.”
In the cell with Iryna were civilian women; some had been detained because they were the wives of military personnel, others because of their volunteer work. They weren’t subjected to physical violence, but the female military personnel were treated brutally.
“They were beaten severely. Among them was a female cook; she was beaten very badly. They also brought in a beaten female police officer. As it later turned out, this was done by a “policewoman” from the Donetsk People’s Republic who had once studied at the same university as her victim. She beat her while saying, ‘This is for our Donetsk,’” says Iryna.
Iryna Dubchenko was released on April 11. For security reasons, she cannot disclose the details of her rescue at this time. She only adds: “Since 2014, I’ve had many friends in the military. In Rozyvka, we fed them varenyky with cherries and boiled corn. After I was detained, my sister asked them to help find me.”
—
——
This article was prepared by the Media Initiative for Human Rights with the support of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.
This is an automatic translation generated by DeepL.