“Every day I feel discomfort that the guys are still there and I am free,” says former Kherson Mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko, who spent three and a half years in Russian captivity.
Kherson, a strategic city in southern Ukraine, was the first regional capital to fall to Russian forces after the full-scale invasion in 2022 and was occupied for eight months before being liberated.
During his imprisonment, Mykolayenko lost 25 kilograms and says he endured repeated beatings and torture. He was abducted by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in April 2022 and held in pretrial detention centers and penal colonies in Russia, where he says conditions were inhumane.
