Surviving Torture and Escaping the Occupied Zone: The Harrowing Story of Maxim’s Journey to Freedom

Some prisoners did not survive and committed suicide.

After being tortured with electricity, Maksim and Tatiana were forced to film a propaganda story about the attempted assassination of Yevgenii Balitsky, the chairman of the occupation administration of the Zaporizhia region. Soon after, Tatiana was released, but Maksim continued to be beaten for another month. After two months, Maxim’s condition had become critical. “I couldn’t walk anymore, I was literally crawling on all fours and bleeding.”

“I thought the gas station would become my grave”

At the end of October 2022, he was sent to the territory controlled by Ukraine on the condition that from there he would provide the coordinates of the Ukrainian armed forces to the Russians through the Telegram channel.

Maksim was taken to the village of Vasilievki, the last checkpoint in the occupied territory – then it was still possible to leave through it to the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Zaporizhzhya region, but now the Russians have blocked this road.

Maximus was told by the occupiers that he had been declared an undesirable person in Melitopol.

From the checkpoint, he went 40 kilometers from Vasiliyivka to the Ukrainian checkpoint in Kamenoskoye. “It was terrible. Kamenoskoye is a gray area. Ours are on one side of the hill and these beasts are on the other. There’s shooting. I just couldn’t go on. I was thinking of asking for a place to stay in Kamenoskoye, but the village is dead. There’s no one there, the houses are in ruins . I went to an abandoned gas station and sat there all night. It was cold, late October.”

The firing continued throughout the night. “I felt the ground shaking from nearby explosions. I thought the gas station would become my grave,” Maxim said.

At dawn, Maxim reached the checkpoint. “I saw the Ukrainian flag, fell to my knees, almost cried. I thought they would kill me because I had no documents, they were not given to me. But our people there fed me, gave me coffee and calmed me down. The police came and took me to Zaporizhzhia. After everything that happened, I was as if numb. I didn’t believe that it was really happening – that I could see the sun, that I was breathing air and that I didn’t have to be afraid of every sound.”

Tatiana was expelled from Melitopol a month before. Now she and Maxim live in Zaporizhzhia. Tatiana works at the factory, but Maxim cannot work yet because he was severely mutilated during the torture. And not just physically.

2023-10-04 21:09:29
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