Ukrainian policewoman's harrowing journey from captivity to freedom

Marianna Czeczeliuk served in the ranks of the Ukrainian police in Mariupol. The city was besieged right at the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022. Marianna and her younger sister took refuge in the Azovstal plant, the longest-held point of resistance in Mariupol. After the evacuation of the facility, the women ended up in a Russian filtration camp.

The occupiers showed no mercy when they discovered her profession. The Russians transported her to a detention centre in Donetsk. She was later taken to a POW camp in Olenivka and then to prisons in Taganrog and Mariupol.

The Russians subjected the policewoman to numerous tortures. She was starved and beaten. The captivity seriously affected her health. Untreated respiratory diseases and a sore throat developed into chronic bronchitis. Marianna lost a lot of weight, stopped menstruating, and her hair began to fall out.

Marianna refused to switch to the Russian side. The occupiers alternated between offering her a high salary and threatening her, but she did not betray her country. Her devastated family sent letters to the 24-year-old, but nothing reached her. The Russians did not inform her parents of what had happened to their child.

Marianna's nightmare came to an end during a prisoner of war exchange. She was among those who returned to Ukraine. Julia Primak, head of the Central Regional Centre of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, announced this news.

A report of a group of Ukrainian prisoners returning to their homeland is circulating on the internet. Among them is 24-year-old Marianna. The incredibly emaciated woman sheds tears and calls her mother, sharing the joyful news that she has returned to safe ground.

Internet photos of Marianna before and after leaving Russian captivity have circulated.

Together with the policewoman, 70 men and five women returned home. At least one-third of them were injured, seriously ill, or disabled.