Captive and Living in Fear, Melitopol Women Reveal Life Under Russian Yoke

Iryna was not used to constantly looking over her shoulder. That all changed when Russian troops entered the Ukrainian city of Melitopol. "There was uncertainty in every second," she said, "not even in every minute, hour, or day—but every second."

The familiar surroundings of the city that had been her home for 53 years were now where she could be killed at any moment by an invading force. War makes the surreal suddenly real.

"We had to rethink everything very quickly."

Iryna did not want her surname used for her and her family's safety. For the same reason, two other women from the city in the Zaporizhzhia oblast who spoke to Newsweek wanted to use aliases.

Before they fled to safety, they felt particularly vulnerable, especially as reports of atrocities and rapes by Russian troops elsewhere exerted a quiet menace over their mindset.

"There are terrible cases when women have committed suicide because it is simply impossible to bear it," Iryna told Newsweek. "If a woman is alone in an apartment or house, the occupants can come in at any moment and commit atrocities."

She said that Russian troops broke ATMs to cut off locals' access to cash, destroyed Ukrainian flags to excise their identity and trashed the learning materials in schools to sever access to the Ukrainian language, the use of which aroused suspicion among the invaders.

Iryna spoke of how Russian troops scoured the skyline for apartment windows with no lights on to alert them that they could be there for the taking. She also recounted how Russians made themselves at home next door to terrified residents who feared what their new neighbors were capable of.

Disconnected from Ukrainian TV channels, Russian propaganda was pumped out on media outlets to anesthetize the population into accepting Russification. But the only medication they needed was from the now Russian-run pharmacies, whose products were being sold at inflated prices to locals forced to endure line-ups six hours long.

"We lost consciousness waiting to buy the most basic medicines, for example, sedatives, heart medicines," Iryna said.

Russian soldiers would routinely search phones, food and money from locals, and rifle through apartments for weapons or explosives, she said. Doors could be kicked in at any moment. "Of course, people can't stand it psychologically."

"People were simply taken to prison for their pro-Ukrainian position," Iryna said, who knew of a father, mother and child who were shot. She told Newsweek that she had a friend who was taken away on July 10 and has not been heard from since.

"Emotionally very hard"

Just because the Russians were in her city was not going to stop Natalia, 20, from demonstrating, During one protest, a Russian soldier grabbed her and threatened her.

"He said if I stepped any further, he would take me somewhere and do things that I would not like and that he did not care because he wanted to do them," she told Newsweek. "I felt fear. It was hard, emotionally very hard."

Afraid to even go for a walk, Natalia felt as if she were "in a cage."

With the perpetrators of the city's suffering living so close to the front doors of women and children, it was time to keep your head down. Even going out to buy groceries was a risky undertaking. Her mother remained in the city.

"When she passes by their apartment, she tiptoes, because if [the Russians] hear her, they can take her phone from her, go to her apartment, and search for it," Natalia said.

"If I went outside, I needed to wear something black something that would close my face and my body because I really felt like they could rape me," she said. "We saw photographs from Bucha and Irpin," she said.

Those cities in the Kyiv region are where war crimes investigators are still picking through the rubble under which lies evidence of atrocities that Moscow has denied.

It is estimated that since the start of the invasion, around 700 people from Melitopol have been taken captive. One of them was Olena. The 27-year-old was stopped by police in August while posting pro-Ukrainian leaflets with her boyfriend.

She said she was interrogated for six hours before being led to a shipping container that measured only six and a half feet by six and a half feet, which she was told would be her residence for the next few months.

"During the day it was unbearably hot like a sauna and at night it was extremely cold," she told Newsweek. "We were taken to the toilet only twice a day—in the morning and in the evening. We begged for a bucket."

Not informed that she had been taken prisoner, her family combed the city, desperate to find her and preparing for the worst.

"My brother even looked for me in the morgue because right at that time a girl had been killed. He went to identify a body. He thought it was me," said Olena.

The conditions of the pre-trial detention center she was then taken to were no better than the metal container she had been holed up in. Sharing a cell with another woman, she said she endured a leaking toilet and was fed dry Russian army rations.

"We washed our hair using bottles with cold water and soap approximately every four days. Because there was no water there, and water was served in five-liter bottles through the feeder," she said.

Finally, Olena was deported from the town because she was considered "a danger to civilians." On October 4, after 44 days in captivity, she said Russian soldiers put a bag on her head and took her to the village of Vasylivka, midway between Zaporizhzhia and Melitopol.

Now with her boyfriend, Olena is trying to find a new job. She does not know whether she will ever recover from her time in Russian captivity but knows she is lucky because she survived and is back in Ukrainian-controlled territory. A psychologist has helped her with the trauma.

"I feel much better," she said, "I feel free."

"We want to rebuild everything."

Melitopol lies about 40 miles behind the front lines in the Zaporizhzhia region and is known as the gateway to Crimea. This is due to its location at the crossroads of two major highways and a rail line linking Russia to that peninsula that Vladimir Putin illegally annexed in 2014.

In September, Putin tried to reprise his land grab by declaring that the Zaporizhzhia region, along with the oblasts of Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk, were part of Russia.

But Russia does not control any of these regions and Ukraine continues to target Russian forces around the city in what is expected to be part of the next major phase of the war.

A bridge in Melitopol across the Molochna River was sabotaged on Monday in an attack attributed to Kyiv's forces. This fuels the defiance of the city's residents.

Iryna still gets updates from the home city she wants to return to. She said the previous day, she heard the screams of a woman next door who had just been informed of the death of her son.

Even if sorrow wants to linger, so does hope.

"We are waiting for the de-occupation of our native city and to return to our home," she said. "We want to rebuild everything."