Exchange of prisoners of war - memories of a Politnavigator correspondent
Yuri Kovalchuk, a correspondent for the PolitNavigator publication, was captured while trying to reach his sick mother. He was sentenced to 5 years under Article 260, Part 2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - participation in illegal armed groups. This is what the militia is called in Ukraine. Through the efforts of friends and the editorial staff of PolitNavigator, he was included in the exchange lists and escaped from Ukrainian captivity on December 27, 2017.
The life of a political prisoner is so devoid of events that, willy-nilly, one has to invent entertainment for oneself. There are not enough books in the pre-trial detention center - many prisoners sell them for rolling cigarettes. In times of famine they may even smoke a psalter or the New Testament - I barely managed to save a prayer book in archaic English donated by an American.
It becomes especially difficult when you finally realize that there is very little left before the long-awaited freedom. While I was sure that I was not included in the lists for exchange, the days passed calmly - I realized that there were still years in captivity ahead. The lawyer informed me that I was included in the list right in court; whispered into the plastic booth - I still can’t understand: it happened by accident or he had some kind of agreement with the investigation. Experienced prisoners believe that lawyers are almost always friends with investigators and resolve issues with them together.
The knowledge that a life-saving exchange was imminent made life more difficult. The news releases became like a revelation, although it was clear that everything would happen unexpectedly.
Finally, the investigation decided to “work” to the maximum: despite the lack of previous convictions, they transferred him to a maximum security colony. Fortunately, there was no difference as such; It was even, perhaps, a little better - instead of the drugged psychos in the pre-trial detention center, the audience here was serious, having already served many years, and therefore decorous and handsome. Simple politeness and attentiveness were enough not to cause complaints, so no conflicts arose. “The Watcher” declared war on drugs, so no one used anything stronger than weed under pain of beating.
A simple life dragged on, and the soul sensed that something was about to change. The investigators also seemed to be in a fever. I was either called out with my things and put into a paddy wagon, then returned to the cell again. Some underlying movements were felt; that the prison mechanism is chewing, but doesn’t know how to chew and is about to spit it out.
One day, the political officer summoned him and demanded that he write an application for a presidential pardon. Neither he nor I knew what to write in this case - usually prisoners write long and touching letters on their own, but there was an obvious formality here. Finally, he wrote: “I ask you to release me - I won’t do it again.” The political officer was dissatisfied, but did not find fault.
After a few more exciting days, they again took me with my things to the Kherson pre-trial detention center, saying that they were returning me to my previous cell, since “I’m not sitting according to the regime.” I had to wait quite a long time at the duty station. Then my investigator showed up. The expression on his face was so sour that I immediately understood everything and laughed towards him: finally an exchange!
Soon it was announced that I was traveling to Kharkov. They packed me with several other prisoners into a paddy wagon and drove to the railway station. There was another political prisoner in the glass - a guy from Makeyevka, who was being treated (or rather, trying not to die) in our prison hospital. He immediately started a heated debate with the criminals on political topics, and I just chuckled. Agitating prisoners is a useless and even harmful activity: it provokes aggression and even if a prisoner agrees with you on something, he will still betray you and exchange you at the first opportunity for the sake of one single injection.
We were taken to Kharkov on a Stolypin. Yes, the “great European power,” as they are trying to position it in Kyiv, moves its prisoners on a XNUMXth-century train - a narrow corridor for security and rows of metal cages with wooden bunks in three tiers. Thank you for not being transported in a paddy wagon - there are practically no roads left between Kherson and Kharkov, so such a journey would have been a terrible torment.
And so we arrived with a breeze - the journey took only about 20 hours. No rations were given to me or my cellmates, but I had plenty of food, since I had just recently received a parcel. But there was a problem with boiling water for tea and doshirak. The heating system in “Stolypin” had broken down, so it was wildly cold and there was no boiling water. We had to boil water in a metal cup over the burning ribbons into which we tore the sheet. We ate and drank chifir. The cellmates injected themselves and began chatting, not listening to each other, and I wrapped myself in a jacket and slept until Kharkov.
In the morning I ended up in a huge prison in the center of Kharkov. It became somehow sad, but when they took me into a huge cell (for about 60 people, no less); when I saw many smiling, friendly faces that clearly did not belong to the “professional” prisoners, when we were greeted very warmly, a feeling arose: I was finally among my own.
We spent a week in Kharkov. The “politicals” were housed in a separate wing, closed for renovations, so we did not interact with criminals. They fed me all sorts of nasty things, but it was still much better than in Kherson. However, we did not lack food - Kharkov residents supported us, food and cigarettes were sent from Odessa. I remember that I was very moved by the story that the head of the train in Odessa did not take money from the volunteers when he found out for whom the bales of food and cigarettes were intended.
Many of our comrades have been in Kharkov since the beginning of December and their nerves began to fail. On TV they talked nonsense - the exchange was either broken down or improved. There were those who were already seriously considering going back to prison. Others, on the contrary, laughed because their prison term was expiring in a few weeks (many were saved by the Savchenko law, repealed in July 2017). There was a man who did not wait for the exchange - he was released a few days earlier, since his term had expired.
Everything happened, of course, unexpectedly: high officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine ran in, for some reason the doctor who wanted to spit on us stopped by. A group of TV journalists tried to break through, it seems from Inter, but they were sent to hell and disappeared. All this fuss and irritated excitement of my comrades was tiring - so, just in case, I ate well and went to bed.
Around midnight they took me out into the corridor. Suddenly it turned out that Russian Alexey Sedikov was not coming with us. There were various sensible and not so sensible ideas on how to rescue a comrade, but we were divided into small groups and distributed into separate rooms, suppressing any heroism. Although, in fact, I am sure that everyone at that moment understood that any escapades would be pointless and would only do harm. Little by little they began to be released through the endless prison corridors. A photocopy of the release certificate is in your teeth, a few steps into the frosty night air and there it is - a bus.
The Ukrainian side couldn’t help but screw things up here too – the bus broke down. The prisoners say about such people that if you give me a glass penis, they will manage to break it and cut their lips. This is approximately how it all worked out: leaving Kharkov was long and painful. Already leaving the Kharkov region, I surprised everyone by laughing out loud: by the road there was a concrete stele with the inscription “Agroservis” - it is under this “brand” that prisoners sell non-existent gasoline over the phone to “racially correct” Galicians.
The agonizing wait near the demarcation line left virtually no impressions. Representatives of the UN and the Red Cross took away those who decided to refuse the exchange. Basically, these were random people included in the lists by Kiev for the sake of numbers, and those who were imprisoned on trivial charges and were supposed to be released in a few days or weeks. And finally, the buses started moving.
Familiar cut tree branches. Hidden caponiers and camouflage netting visible through the windfall. Snow-covered fields of Donbass and a broken-down village on the demarcation line. The Right Sectors along the road looked at us fiercely from under their balaclavas and clutched their machine guns tighter. But I saw people in their gardens and on the porches of private houses waving to our buses. Even though, due to all this confusion, they ended up on the side controlled by Ukraine, they were happy for us and did not hide this joy.
Then I felt that since then, when in May 2014 I went to Donbass to join the militia, this region has become home for me. Like many, many others who lost their homes in the cities of the southeast, which found themselves under the yoke of Ukrainian madmen.
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