Two days in a well
How a Ukrainian priest survived Russian captivity
Russian forces arrived in Motyzhyn three days into the war. For a month, the occupiers controlled the village and part of the highway leading to Kyiv. People who were taken prisoner were severely tortured, killed and thrown in a mass grave. Motyzhyn is only 40km from Bucha, Irpin and Borodyanka, places which are known all over the world for Russian atrocities. Oleg was held captive for three days and survived. He served in a church for many years and had never seen such evil before. This is the story of a man who went through hell and did not break.
Trigger Warning: The following article contains depictions of violence and death, which may cause emotional or physiological distress in readers and viewers.
Oleg B. in his church in Motyzhyn, Ukraine.
Oleg B. works in a rehabilitation centre for drug and alcohol addicts in the village of Motyzhyn. He is also a minister of the local Protestant church. At the time of the interview, two months had passed since the walls and windows of the building had been pierced and smashed by Russian artillery shells, and Oleg had been ruthlessly tortured in Russian captivity. Now he has returned to work. During our conversation, he jokes a lot. However, he is still haunted by memories of torture and the cries of prisoners being killed nearby. Oleg has to undergo long-term rehabilitation and take pills to sleep.
In Russian captivity
When I met Oleg, I asked him about when the Russian military come to his centre for the first time and started shelling the building. He remembered the day vividly: "They came on March 23rd, looking for the Ukrainian military. Before that, they didn't know we were there because we were always hiding. They thought it was a school. At some point they began to suspect that Ukrainian soldiers were staying with us, they saw that we had proper accommodation: a canteen, food, and bedrooms. So the next day they started shelling".
There was hardly a habitable square metre left on the walls of the rehabilitation centre, the windows and doors were smashed, and there were pogroms inside: Occupiers even shot at the picture of Jesus. Fortunately, most people undergoing rehabilitation - there were 9 at that time - managed to escape. But Oleg stayed. He cared for a man with no legs and couldn't leave him.
Oleg's Talisman: A sniper's bullet that hit the wall just a few inches above his head.
He remembered: "When the Russian intelligence officers didn’t find anyone in the building, they took me prisoner and began to interrogate me. They asked me where the Ukrainian military was, how many people there were and when they came. But we never had them in our centre. I was constantly beaten, tortured, shot between my legs and shot near my head, they even threatened to drive over my legs with the infantry fighting vehicle, all to intimidate me. My spine also was badly injured, and it still hurts”.
According to Oleg, the atrocities in the village were carried out by Russian mercenaries, the private military company “Wagner”*. Earlier, Ukrainian intelligence also reported about the participation of "Wagnerites" in the war against Ukraine.
*The Wagner Group is a Russian private military company staffed by mercenaries. It has been involved in many conflicts, including in the Donbas region on the Russian side, in Syria on the side of Putin's ally the Dictator Assad, and in Sudan. An independent mission under the auspices of the UN Council has determined that Wagner's actions are classified as war crimes or crimes against humanity. The European Union has imposed personal sanctions against Wagner participants.
After the liberation of Motyzhyn from the occupation, a mass grave was discovered in the village. According to preliminary data, about 30 civilians were killed, including the chairman of the village, Olga Sukhenko with her husband and son. Many of the bodies show signs of torture. But in fact, there may be more victims, not only from Motyzhyn.
Oleg said: “They did not care whether they killed a person or not. There was a woman, out of fear she ran out into the yard and one of the occupiers shot her in the back. Only because she was wearing a black skirt and blouse. Those Russians had an order: everyone in black must be killed…I was blindfolded and taken away from the centre. They tied me to a quad bike, dragged me to the base and finally took me to a secret facility where their “Grads”* were stationed. They interrogated me there further but achieved nothing, and then threw me into a well."
*BM-21 “Grad” is a truck-mounted 122mm multiple rocket-launcher system.
How Oleg survived the days in the well
In fact, the well is a concrete pipe sunk into the ground to serve as a water cistern. It’s not deep enough to stand up in, and not wide enough to stretch out one’s arms and legs, which, over time, would become numb. When it started raining, Oleg almost died in it. But one of the soldiers threw an oilcloth on top so that the well would not be flooded with water. Otherwise, Oleg says, that night would have been his last:
“Among the Russian soldiers there were also young men, conscripts, because of them I’m still alive. When they put me in the well, they wrapped me into the jacket of one of the volunteers who had been killed, because my hands were tied up behind me. I would have frozen there if it weren't for this jacket”.
Oleg spent two days in the well. Then Russian soldiers took him out, dragged him to the barn and instead threw in the body of a murdered civilian. It was necessary for them as there was no grave nearby where they could hide the body. Oleg recalled how he mentally prepared for death when he heard the cries of other people from above. He thought about what he should say when his turn came and asked God to remind him of those words at the right time. Oleg admitted that faith helped him to remain a human and endure those trials: ”I just wanted to pass it with dignity. Before me in history, thousands of people went through such a difficult path. They were nailed to crosses and thrown into cages with predators. But after all, could people get over it, withstand it? Yes, they could. There was some special grace from God, which He gave to those people. So, I asked for the same thing to happen to me”.
In the barn was one more elderly man whose daughter was killed by a Russian sniper in the garden. For the first time, food was brought there to the prisoners: a bowl of soup, a loaf of bread and two bottles of water. Oleg spent another day there. On March 27th, the Russian military began to retreat from the village under the onslaught of Ukrainian forces. Oleg says that the door to the barn was left open and he, together with the old man, managed to escape.“These conscripts kept asking me to pray for them”, Oleg told me that when they left, one of them came in and said to him: “‘Pastor, God has heard your prayers, we are leaving. Please pray for us to stay alive.’”
Oleg’s liberation
On April 2nd, the Territorial Defence Forces* liberated the entire Kyiv region from occupation. However, the great joy from this news was quickly replaced by great pain. The world saw the first photos from the liberated territories: Tortured bodies of men, women and children with their hands tied. Mass graves. As of June 3rd, law enforcement officers reported that they have already found 1,314 civilians killed by occupiers in this area. Now, according to Oleg, Motyzhyn is coming back to life. Shops are starting to open. Sappers are working to demine the area. The rehabilitation centre is also being restored, and people who fled during the shelling returned there.
*Territorial Defense Forces - a separate type of forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 25 brigades, which are responsible for the organization, preparation and implementation of territorial defence tasks. The basis of the brigade is a permanent staff - military personnel. The rest are reservists who have signed a contract with the brigade and are conscripts.
"The fact that I'm alive proofs that God is alive", said Oleg. "This is all God's miracle because firstly we were released somehow, then they did not have time for us there, for an unknown reason. There are many such moments that show me that it was God who did it, that it was not just by chance. They already wanted to kill me, and one of them said to the others if I was actually a priest if I was not to blame, why should they have taken sin on their souls to kill me, to kill the priest just like that. Someone constantly stood up for me, I just didn't see him.”
At the end of our interview, Oleg emphasized that he did not regret what had happened to him. Moreover, he wouldn’t want the people who had captured and tortured him to be killed: "They need to be sentenced to a life in prison and realize what they have done”.
The testimony of Oleg B. has already been recorded by law enforcement officers and the case was brought to The International Criminal Court in The Hague. About the war crimes of Russians, the man is ready to tell his story in international courts. As of June 9th, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has already registered 16,431 facts that are being investigated as crimes of aggression and war crimes.
