«When Andrii saw a photo of his son, the whole cell was in tears.» How two families have been waiting four years for their civilian husbands to return from Russian captivity

The most precious thing in Olena Melnyk’s home is a letter from her husband from Russian captivity. A sheet of paper with a confession of love. “How are you? I’m fine,” he writes to his wife in Russian. He couldn’t write in Ukrainian — it’s forbidden in the Russian penal colony. Four years ago, in March 2022, Russian soldiers came to the home of Olena and her husband Oleksii in the village of Bratske in Sumy Oblast. Without explaining anything, they took Oleksii away to an unknown location. Since then, he has been held in Russia. For the past year, he has been in a maximum-security penal colony in Tula Oblast. The Russian authorities accuse him of nothing — but they also won’t release him. Back home, Oleksii’s daughter Zlata is growing up. She was four when her father was taken. When the International Committee of the Red Cross delivered her photo to Oleksii, he didn’t recognize her. She is already eight.

The beginning of the occupation

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Sumy Oblast began at 4 a.m. on February 24, 2022. Russian forces crossed the border and advanced toward Sumy from several directions at once. Russia covered the movement of its troops through the region with air strikes and artillery attacks. Residents learned the invasion had begun when they woke up to explosions.

Oleksii Melnyk worked as a driver at a bread factory in Sumy. By 5 a.m. he was already at work, loading vehicles with freshly baked bread. By 11 a.m. he had delivered it to stores and rushed home. His wife Olena and their daughter Zlata were waiting with their belongings packed.

The family decided to leave Sumy for Olena’s parents’ home in the village of Bratske. It’s only a few kilometers from the regional center, but the family thought it would be safer there. They reasoned that the Russians would bomb Sumy, while a small village would be left alone.

Bratske has only two streets and about 50 residents. The family didn’t realize that one of the main Russian routes toward Sumy would pass through it.

The first days in Bratske were quiet, but by early March the village was occupied. Olena and Oleksii didn’t leave the house. They couldn’t return to Sumy — Russian military vehicles were everywhere. The family “saved every piece of bread” and feared every creak of the gate, Olena recalls. From neighbors, the Melnyks heard that the Russians were going door to door — checking phones and looking for government officials, law enforcement, and ATO veterans. Oleksii was neither a local official nor a soldier.

A torture site in the middle of the village

On March 14, 2022, Russian soldiers came to the Melnyks’ house with a search that ended with Oleksii being put on an armored personnel carrier and taken away to an unknown destination.

“They came in with rifles — about seven people in military uniform. They talked to Oleksii in the yard for a long time and then took him away. I ran after them holding Zlata in my arms: ‘Where are you taking my husband?’ They said he’d be home soon. Four years have passed since then,” Olena says.

Over the years of waiting, she pieced together what happened to her husband. On March 13, 2022, Russian troops took only Oleksii from Bratske. From the neighboring village of Hrebenykivka they took three more men: former police officer Anatolii Yarosh, his relative Oleksandr, and the village head Oleksii Vynnychenko. For two days, the men were held in Boromlia on the premises of one of the enterprises.

The Russians bound their hands with tape and threw them into a small metal booth. Before that, the captives were beaten with boots and tortured with electric shocks. It was freezing outside, and there was no heat inside the booth. They were given neither food nor water. A Russian soldier sat on top of the booth and fired into the air if any of the captives moved. Over the following days, several more hostages were thrown into the booth; then everyone was loaded into a military truck and taken to an unknown place. There, someone interrogated them.

Oleksii was allowed to call his wife, but Olena had no connection. Oleksii called a friend and said he had been taken to Russia and was being held captive.

“Until Lyosha called, we were searching for him,” Olena recalls. “We walked to Boromlia — the Russians had a headquarters there. Some soldier, either Russian or from the so-called ‘DNR,’ [call sign] Medved, was in charge and said they were ‘checking’ Lyosha.”

At the end of March 2022, Ukraine’s Armed Forces liberated Sumy Oblast from Russian occupation. Olena and her daughter returned to Sumy and began searching for her husband. They contacted law enforcement and wrote dozens of letters to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Everywhere, the family heard the same answer: “Wait.”

A letter from her husband

In 2023, Olena received two pieces of news about her husband at once. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed he was alive. And Ukrainian serviceman Yurii Chapliuk, who returned from Russian captivity, said he had been held in the same cell as Oleksii in a penal colony in Belgorod Oblast.

Yurii found Olena because the wives of captives had created a closed group on social media. There they support one another and share news about their husbands.

“One day, a woman from that group called me and said her acquaintance was looking for me,” Olena recalls. “I was jumping around the house with happiness. Until then, we didn’t know whether my husband was alive.”

Recently, the Red Cross asked Olena to record a voice message for Oleksii — they were taking it to him in the colony. Olena said she would wait for him no matter what. Along with the message, she sent Oleksii a photo of Zlata. In response, Olena received a letter from her husband. On an A4 sheet, Oleksii wrote by hand the most important thing: that he loves them and constantly worries about how they are living without him — whether they have enough money and a place to stay.

“He didn’t recognize Zlata in the photo — that’s how much she’s grown without him. When they took him, she wasn’t even in school yet, and now she’s a princess, finishing second grade,” Olena says.

At Christmas 2025, another serviceman who had been released from captivity came to Olena. He said that for the past year Oleksii has been held in maximum-security penal colony No. 1 in the town of Donskoye, Tula Oblast. The Russian authorities have not brought charges — but they also haven’t included him in exchanges. At one point in the colony, he was beaten; his kidneys were damaged. He urinated blood.

The serviceman came with gifts for Olena and Zlata. Oleksii had asked him to bring their daughter a teddy bear.

“I don’t understand why they’re holding him,” Olena says in despair. “They exchange soldiers, but not civilians. I used to count the minutes and days without Oleksii — now I count the years.”

Four years of waiting have exhausted the family. Olena often cries; Zlata hardly talks about her father. Once at school, children were telling the class what their fathers do for work. Zlata quietly said: “My dad is in captivity.”

The family lives in a dormitory in Sumy, renting a small room. Olena works as a lab technician in a hospital — “we have to live on something.” Their daughter is often home alone, because school is online.

“When shelling starts, our neighbor takes Zlata to the shelter. She calls me crying — she’s scared. I run to her under fire,” Olena says.

Olena is lucky to have people nearby who can support her at any time — at work and at home. Her friend Yuliia Shkryoba, whose husband has also been in Russian captivity for four years, doesn’t have that kind of support.

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Friends in misfortune

Yuliia Shkryoba and her husband Andrii Okhrimenko lived in the village of Boromlia, about 40 km from Sumy. On February 24, 2022, they didn’t manage to flee the war. The border with Russia is less than 30 km away. Russian troops quickly covered that distance and entered Boromlia at around 10 a.m.

At first, the Russians occupied the buildings of local enterprises; later they began driving people out of their homes and living there themselves. They destroyed the center of Boromlia with air strikes and artillery. They set up checkpoints throughout the village. They didn’t allow locals to leave the occupation and went from house to house with searches.

In early March, a shell hit Olena and Andrii’s house. The family survived by a miracle because they were hiding elsewhere. On March 13, Andrii went to the damaged house to see what condition it was in. Russian soldiers were in the yard. They detained him — and he never returned home. Later, Olena learned that her husband had been held in a metal booth together with Oleksii Melnyk and other residents of the Boromlia community.

“When they took Andrii, I took our son Sasha — he was two at the time — and went to the Russians. It was freezing. I came to a Russian checkpoint and said I was looking for my husband. There was a soldier with the call sign Medved. He said Andrii would be released soon,” Yuliia recalls.

On March 26, 2022, Ukraine’s Armed Forces liberated Boromlia from Russian occupation. Yuliia ran outside at every rustle, hoping her husband had been freed. But no miracle happened.

“Other residents of our community whom the Russians captured were released. The Russians let them go before they fled the village,” Yuliia says.

But three men — Andrii Okhrimenko, Oleksii Melnyk, and the village head of Hrebenykivka Oleksii Vynnychenko — were taken to Russia. Two years ago, in March 2024, Vynnychenko died in one of the Russian penal colonies. His body was returned to Ukraine during a repatriation.

“After Vynnychenko’s death, there are two civilian captives from the entire Boromlia community still in Russian captivity — my husband and Olena’s,” Yuliia says. “Over these years, Olena has become my closest friend — misfortune brought us together.”

Love is… waiting for him to come home

Olena and Yuliia talk whenever they can. They consult each other on how to raise their children and how to explain why their fathers aren’t coming home. Yuliia also managed, through the Red Cross, to send Andrii a message and a photo of their son and to receive a reply.

“In his letter he asked about our son: ‘How’s Buba?’ Only Andrii calls Sasha that — short for ‘bubochka.’ That’s how I knew it was definitely Andrii writing,” Yuliia says.

Servicemen who encountered Andrii in Russian penal colonies tell Yuliia that her husband constantly talks about his son.

“When Andrii saw Sasha’s photo, the whole cell was in tears,” she says.

Yuliia regrets that Andrii doesn’t get to see their child grow up — the child he had dreamed of his whole life. The couple married late. Yuliia has an older son; for Andrii this is his first child.

In November 2025, Sasha turned six. He has already forgotten his father’s voice, because he last saw him when he was two. But Sasha’s pain hasn’t gone away, Yuliia says. He dreams of becoming a police officer “to punish bandits and Russians.”

Yuliia and Sasha are waiting for Andrii at home in Boromlia. Yuliia’s older son helped rebuild the destroyed house, but he lives in Kharkiv and doesn’t visit often. All the hard work around the house falls on Yuliia.

“I chop wood myself. If something breaks, there’s no one to turn to. Recently the water pump broke. I stood over it, crying, and repaired it,” Yuliia says.

Every corner of her house is decorated with dried flowers, postcards, and porcelain figurines. In the most prominent place in the living room hangs a large family portrait — Yuliia and Andrii hugging — with the words below: “Love is waiting for him to come back from captivity as long as it takes, despite tears and pain.”

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This publication was prepared with the support of the Partnership for a Strong Ukraine Programme. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the NGO Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Programme and/or its financial partners.