Several former Ukrainian women prisoners of war held by the Russians spoke on Wednesday of their “inhumane” and “horrendous” detention conditions, days after they were released in an exchange with Russia, AFP reported.

Viktoriya Obidina, Tetyana Vasylchenko, Inga Tsykinda and Lyudmila Huseynova talk about the hours, days, weeks and months they spent in captivity of the Russian army, not knowing where they were.

According to Ms Obidina, a 26-year-old military nurse who spent five months in captivity, the conditions were “horrendous”, with “disgusting” food.

She and her four-year-old daughter spent weeks in the underground tunnels of the huge Azovstal steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.

According to Ms. Obidina about her time in captivity, detainees, including herself, were allowed to go outside “only very rarely.” “We were stuffed into cells like sardines,” she said at a press conference in Kyiv.

“Ukraine does not want you”

Tetyana Vasylchenko, a civilian who helped the Ukrainian army in the paramedical field, spoke about the “psychological pressure” and “inhumane” conditions in which she lived for weeks: “They treated us like criminals, humiliated us,” and she also recalled lamenting the almost complete lack of medical care.

The four women also mentioned not having access to Ukrainian media, while they said their Russian captors kept telling them, “Ukraine doesn’t want you.”

However, these ex-prisoners, who were released among the 108 women who were exchanged in mid-October, find it difficult to put into words what they have been through. The memories are still too fresh, too bright.

“Too little time has passed since the release,” Huseynova said, and Inga Tsykinda, who was born in Lithuania but has lived in Ukraine for 25 years, added: “I can’t say anything good. I lost eight kilograms,” she said, also condemning the malnutrition of Ukrainian prisoners.

However, they all remember their release well, between “tears of joy” and “absolute happiness”, when they found out that they were in the territory controlled by Kyiv.

After eight months of war, several of which have been spent in prison, their desires differ: those who want to help soldiers at the front again, and those who, like Inga Tsikinda, are too scarred to risk being detained again. . “I won’t go through that again,” she says.

On the same topic:

• The story of a Ukrainian prisoner: we were tortured with hammers, electric shocks or simulated drowning

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