Her ribs were broken, she was photographed naked – Anzhela spent half a year in Russian captivity

For Anzhela Pitsu, the sound of tape being unrolled is still one of the most frightening sounds today: it brings back the torture she endured in Russian captivity. She spent half a year in several detention facilities, including Olenivka, where her ribs were broken, and later, at a penal colony in Russia, she was stripped and photographed naked. In the hardest moments, she clung to the hope that one day she would be able to embrace her parents and daughters again.

She joined the Ukrainian army at the age of forty-nine, where she first served as a cook, then learned artillery duties and became an operator of anti-tank missile systems. The full-scale Russian invasion caught her in Mariupol, where soldiers tried to hold their positions amid constant bombardment. "There was constant tension, we were always under strain. From four o'clock in the morning, the fighter jets would come and bomb us," she recalled. When they had nothing left to defend themselves with, they decided to try to break out of the city.

Anzhela was later taken into Russian captivity, and during her interrogation in Olenivka she was severely beaten.

she recalled the blow that broke her ribs. Along with her own ordeal, she also carries the memory of her comrades' torture out of captivity, and even today she flinches when she hears tape being unrolled.

Nearly thirty Ukrainian servicewomen, from the areas around Sumy, Ternopil, Lviv and Mariupol, were held in the cramped cell. They tried to support one another to preserve their inner strength and to keep their captors from breaking them. On Ukraine's Independence Day, three of them, Vika, Anzhela and Zoryana, sang the Ukrainian national anthem: they started quietly, but loud enough that the women held in the neighboring cell on the other side of the wall could hear them, and they too joined in the singing. On October 1, they were transferred from Olenivka to a penal colony in Voronezh Region, where they were ordered to strip and wash. Anzhela was then photographed naked. "I asked: what are you looking for, what do you want? They answered: 'I'm looking for a tattoo.' They put up a sign with a long number on it, then started taking pictures. At that moment, all I could think of was the Great Patriotic War," she said of the humiliation.

On October 17, soldiers entered the cell instead of the guards and set the Ukrainian prisoners of war moving toward the site of the prisoner exchange. Anzhela also remembers the food they were given there, because for the first time in a long while they finally got proper food. "We stood there miserably, emaciated. They gave us something to eat. My God, when we saw the sausage and cheese, we couldn't believe it! Bread in one hand, sausage in the other. After so long, we finally saw proper food again." Her hope of returning to her family eventually came true, and after her captivity she also underwent rehabilitation. In a video call, she spoke to her little daughter like this: "I'm very proud of you. You are the most beautiful little flower in the world to me. I love you so much, darling." Today, her hobby, her faith in victory, and above all the hope that all her comrades still in captivity will also return home give her strength.