Julija Pajewska never thought she would survive hell in Russian captivity. She endured three months of mental and physical torture and lived in a small 12 square meter prison cell with 21 other Ukrainian inmates. She was emaciated, weighed ten pounds less. “No one was allowed to touch me, not even my friends were allowed to hug me,” she said in an interview with t-online.
The wounds of captivity were too deep. “When I crossed the Ukrainian border from the occupied Donetsk region, I saw a Ukrainian soldier,” she says. Pajewska struggles to regain her composure. “I ran up to him and hugged him.” She wipes a tear from her face and smiles.
Pajewska is sitting in a cafe at the Frankfurt Book Fair during the conversation with Watson’s media partner t-online. She was invited to Frankfurt by Ukrainian publishers. In Ukraine, she is a celebrity. The war of aggression against Ukraine also plays a role at this year’s book fair: there are numerous events on the subject and even a separate joint stand where Ukrainian book publishers present themselves.
Pajewska filmed the treatment of injured in Mariupol
As a paramedic, Pajewska had captured more than 256 gigabytes of harrowing footage with her body camera for about 20 days before she was captured — of the wounded being treated in the besieged city of Mariupol. She gave the images on a tiny data card to journalists from the AP news agency. The journalists left the city on March 15 and smuggled the card, hidden in a tampon, through 15 Russian checkpoints. The next day, Pajewska was arrested by pro-Russian forces.
Pajewska became famous in Ukraine for training field medicine. Her blonde locks and tattoos on both arms are her trademarks. The 53-year-old worked as a designer and Aikido trainer until 2013.
During the Maidan protests in Kiev in 2013, Pajewska started working as a paramedic. A year later she went to the front when the war started in Donbass. In total, she trained about 8,000 other paramedics. Her volunteer group became famous as “Taira’s Angels”. With the onset of the Russian invasion, Pajewska took care of the care and evacuation of the wounded in Mariupol until she was kidnapped.
On the day she was kidnapped, Pajewska from Mariupol drove to the border with two Ukrainians. Mariupol is located in Donetsk Oblast on territory controlled by pro-Russian fighters. Russian soldiers checked their documents at a checkpoint in the town of Manhush, about 20 kilometers west of Mariupol. “When they came back, they arrested us,” Pajewska recalls.
She now chooses her words carefully – for fear of endangering the Ukrainian women who are still in prison. In detention, “the psychological terror has not diminished for a minute in the three months”, she reports. Their statements are consistent with the reports of other Ukrainian prisoners.
She could only shower once during that time. Pajewska needs hormone preparations. The pills were taken from her when she was captured. The Russians did not return them to her until the tenth day after her arrest. “They threw the pills on the floor,” she says. During the torture, Pajewska suffered multiple injuries: broken bones, broken ribs, a fracture in the right shoulder.
As a result of the beating, Pajewska still has a headache to this day
Due to the constant knocking, Pajewska has regular headaches. “We were all tortured. Other prisoners who were either seriously injured or ill and asked for painkillers were not believed. Then the prison guards struck,” she says. “They treated us like slaves.” Her tormentors were blinded by Russian propaganda. “They said the whole world should submit to Greater Russia. That is predetermined. We should accept it and stop resisting.”
She was constantly insulted as a Nazi. The Russians accused her of killing people. “But the videos show the opposite,” says Pajewska. She is convinced that her video recordings saved her life.
On June 17, Pajewska was released from Russian custody through a prisoner exchange. There had previously been a solidarity campaign for the 53-year-old in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyj announced on the day of her liberation: “We have succeeded in getting Taira, Ukrainian paramedic Yulia Payevska, released.”
Soource :Watson
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
