A celebrated Ukrainian medic recorded her time in Mariupol on an information card no larger than a thumbnail, smuggled out to the world in a tampon. Now she is in Russian palms, at a time when Mariupol itself is on the verge of falling.
Yuliia Paievska is thought in Ukraine as Taira, a moniker from the nickname she selected within the World of Warcraft online game.
Utilizing a physique digicam, she recorded 256 gigabytes of her group's frantic efforts over two weeks to convey individuals again from the brink of loss of life.
She obtained the harrowing clips to an Related Press group, the final worldwide journalists within the Ukrainian metropolis of Mariupol, as they left in a uncommon humanitarian convoy.
Russian troopers captured Taira and her driver the subsequent day, March 16, one in every of many compelled disappearances in areas of Ukraine now held by Russia. Russia has portrayed Taira as working for the nationalist Azov Battalion, according to Moscow's narrative that it's making an attempt to "denazify" Ukraine. However the AP discovered no such proof, and associates and colleagues stated she had no hyperlinks to Azov.
The army hospital the place she led evacuations of the wounded will not be affiliated with the battalion, whose members have spent weeks defending a sprawling metal plant in Mariupol. The footage Taira recorded itself testifies to the truth that she tried to avoid wasting wounded Russian troopers in addition to Ukrainian civilians.
A clip recorded on March 10 exhibits two Russian troopers taken roughly out of an ambulance by a Ukrainian soldier. One is in a wheelchair. The opposite is on his knees, palms sure behind his again, with an apparent leg harm. Their eyes are lined by winter hats, and so they put on white armbands.
A Ukrainian soldier curses at one in every of them. "Relax, relax," Taira tells him.
A lady asks her, "Are you going to deal with the Russians?"
"They won't be as type to us," she replies. "However I could not do in any other case. They're prisoners of battle."
A whole lot kidnapped or captured
Taira is now a prisoner of the Russians, one in every of a whole bunch of outstanding Ukrainians who've been kidnapped or captured, together with native officers, journalists, activists and human rights defenders.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has recorded 204 circumstances of enforced disappearances. It stated some victims could have been tortured, and 5 had been later discovered lifeless. The workplace of Ukraine's ombudswoman stated it had obtained experiences of 1000's of lacking individuals by late April, 528 of whom had in all probability been captured.
The Russians are also focusing on medics and hospitals though the Geneva Conventions single out each army and civilian medics for cover "in all circumstance." The World Well being Organisation has verified greater than 100 assaults on well being care because the battle started, a quantity more likely to rise.
Extra just lately, Russian troopers pulled a girl off a convoy from Mariupol on Could 8, accused her of being a army medic and compelled her to decide on between letting her 4-year-old daughter accompany her to an unknown destiny or persevering with on to Ukrainian-controlled territory. The mom and little one ended up separated, and the little woman made it to the Ukrainian metropolis of Zaporizhzhia, UN officers stated.
"This isn't about saving one explicit lady," stated Oleksandra Chudna, who volunteered as a medic with Taira in 2014. "Taira will characterize these medics and girls who went to the entrance."
Taira's state of affairs takes on a brand new significance because the final defenders in Mariupol are evacuated into Russian territories, in what Russia calls a mass give up and Ukraine calls a mission completed. Russia says greater than 1700 Ukrainian fighters have surrendered this week in Mariupol, bringing new consideration to the therapy of prisoners. Ukraine has expressed hope that the fighters might be exchanged for Russian prisoners of battle, however a Russian official has stated with out proof that they need to be not exchanged however placed on trial.
Ukraine's authorities has stated it tried so as to add Taira's title to a prisoner change weeks in the past. Nonetheless, Russia denies holding her, regardless of her look on tv networks within the separatist Donetsk area of Ukraine and on the Russian NTV community, handcuffed and together with her face bruised. The Ukrainian authorities declined to talk about the case when requested by the AP.
'The boy is gone'
Taira, 53, is thought in Ukraine as a star athlete and the one who skilled the nation's volunteer medic pressure. What comes throughout in her video and in descriptions from her associates is a giant, exuberant character with a telegenic presence, the type of particular person to experience swimming with dolphins.
The video is an intimate file from February 6 to March 10 of a metropolis beneath siege that has now develop into a worldwide image of the Russian invasion and Ukrainian resistance. In it, Taira is a whirlwind of power and grief, recording the loss of life of a kid and the therapy of wounded troopers from either side.
On February 24, the primary day of the battle, Taira chronicled efforts to bandage a Ukrainian soldier's open head wound.
Two days later, she ordered colleagues to wrap an injured Russian soldier in a blanket. "Cowl him as a result of he's shaking," she says within the video. She calls the younger man "Sunshine" — a favorite nickname for the various troopers who handed via her palms — and asks why he got here to Ukraine.
"You are caring for me," he tells her, nearly in marvel. Her response: "We deal with everybody equally."
Later that evening, two kids — a brother and sister — arrive gravely wounded from a shootout at a checkpoint. Their dad and mom are lifeless. By the top of the evening, regardless of Taira's entreaties to "stick with me, baby," so is the little boy.
Taira turns away from his lifeless physique and cries. "I hate (this)," she says. She closes his eyes.
Speaking to somebody in the dead of night exterior as she smokes, she says, "The boy is gone. The boy has died. They're nonetheless giving CPR to the woman. Perhaps she is going to survive."
At one level, she stares into a rest room mirror, a shock of blond hair falling over her brow in stark distinction to the shaved sides of her head. She cuts the digicam.
All through the video, she complains about continual ache from again and hip accidents that left her partially disabled. She embraces docs. She cracks jokes to cheer up discouraged ambulance drivers and sufferers alike. And at all times, she wears a stuffed animal connected to her vest handy to any kids she may deal with.
With a husband and teenage daughter, she knew what battle can do to a household. At one level, an injured Ukrainian soldier asks her to name his mom. She tells him he'll be capable of name her himself, "so do not make her nervous."
Video smuggled out earlier than Taira vanished
On March 15, a police officer handed over the small information card to a group of Related Press journalists who had been documenting atrocities in Mariupol, together with a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital. The workplace contacted Taira on a walkie-talkie, and he or she requested the journalists to take the cardboard safely out of the town. The cardboard was hidden inside a tampon, and the group handed via 15 Russian checkpoints earlier than reaching Ukrainian-controlled territory.
The following day, Taira disappeared together with her driver Serhiy. On the identical day, a Russian airstrike shattered the Mariupol theatre and killed near 600 individuals.
A video aired throughout a March 21 Russian information broadcast introduced her seize, accusing her of attempting to flee the town in disguise. Taira appears groggy and haggard as she reads a press release positioned under the digicam, calling for an finish to the preventing. As she talks, a voiceover derides her colleagues as Nazis, utilizing language echoed this week by Russia because it described the fighters from Mariupol.
The printed was the final time she was seen.
Each the Russian and Ukrainian governments have publicised interviews with prisoners of battle, regardless of worldwide humanitarian regulation that describes the follow as inhumane and degrading therapy.
Taira's husband, Vadim Puzanov, stated he has obtained little information about his spouse since her disappearance. Selecting his phrases fastidiously, he described a continuing fear in addition to outrage at how she has been portrayed by Russia.
"Accusing a volunteer medic of all mortal sins, together with organ trafficking, is already outrageous propaganda — I do not even know who it is for," he stated.
Raed Saleh, the top of Syria's White Helmets, in contrast Taira's state of affairs to what volunteers together with his group confronted and proceed to face in Syria. He stated his group additionally has been accused of organ trafficking and coping with terrorist teams.
"Tomorrow, they could ask her to make statements and strain her to say issues," Saleh stated.
Taira has outsize significance in Ukraine due to her status. She taught aikido martial arts and labored as a medic as a sideline.
She took on her title in 2013, when she joined first assist volunteers on the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that drove out a Russia-backed authorities. In 2014, Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
Taira went to the jap Donbas area, the place Moscow-backed separatists fought Ukrainian forces. There, she taught tactical medication and began a bunch of medics referred to as Taira's Angels. She additionally labored as a liaison between the army and civilians in front-line cities the place few docs and hospitals dared function. In 2019, she left for the Mariupol area, and her medical unit was based mostly there.
Taira was a member of the Ukraine Invictus Video games for army veterans, the place she was set to compete in archery and swimming. Invictus stated she was a army medic from 2018 to 2020 however had since been demobilised.
She obtained the physique digicam in 2021 to movie for a Netflix documentary collection on inspirational figures being produced by Britain's Prince Harry, who based the Invictus Video games. However when Russian forces invaded, she used it to shoot scenes of injured civilians and troopers as a substitute.
That footage is now particularly poignant, with Mariupol on the brink. In one of many final movies Taira shot, she is seated subsequent to the motive force who would disappear together with her. It's March 9.
"Two weeks of battle. Besieged Mariupol," she says quietly. Then she curses at nobody specifically, and the display screen goes darkish.