“I plan to outlive the Russian Federation”

When Volodymyr Mykolaienko woke up to the sound of explosions on February 24, 2022, he told his wife, “That’s it, I’m going to defend the city.” He had no way of knowing then that a few weeks later the Russians would drag him off in the trunk of a car, and that nearly three and a half years would pass before he could freely return home.

On the first day of the war, he went to where the volunteers were gathering. They were taken to a school with no windows or doors, handed weapons, and told to wait for orders. After that they tried to hold back the attackers at the Antonivskyi Bridge, came under mortar fire, and the first wounded appeared, but the Russian military columns still managed to cross in the end. After the occupiers entered Kherson, the city’s residents took to the streets in protest. Mykolaienko walked at the head of the march, holding a huge Ukrainian flag, and the protesters stopped at the TV tower, where Russian soldiers were hiding, and let them know, in less than friendly terms, where to find the Russian warship. The occupiers responded with gunfire and stun grenades, dragging people out of the crowd and beating them.

Mykolaienko was later invited to a meeting that, according to his own people, had been set up as a trap. He still managed to call his wife, and by doing so saved others as well: the Russians had wanted to use his phone to lure more people to various “meetings” and capture them. He was taken to the basement of the regional police headquarters, where interrogations and beatings awaited him. From the very first day, he was offered a deal: if he recognized the new authority and took on a role in the “leadership” set up by the occupiers, he would be released and neither he nor his family would be harmed. Mykolaienko refused.

His captors later concluded that he was running the underground resistance in Kherson, and tried to get him to reveal the locations of weapons caches, but he did not give up a single one. At one point he was taken back to Kherson to be filmed, and a Russian propagandist asked him whether he considered Roman Shukhevych a hero. Mykolaienko replied that for Ukraine, yes, he was — to which they told him: “You will never get out of here.”

He was later taken to Sevastopol, where he spent two days in a model prison that the Russians used to show how “well” they treated prisoners of war. He remembers young boys from that period whose spirits were systematically broken, and he still doesn’t know whether they will ever be able to come to terms with what they went through. He had previously had a chance to be freed in a prisoner exchange, but when the Russians said they wanted twenty Russian soldiers in return for him, he turned down the offer.

“How could I look into the eyes of the mothers of those Ukrainian soldiers who remain in prison, while I get released in exchange for twenty Russians?”

he said.

The fate of the prisoners left behind still weighs on him: he often wakes up feeling guilty that he is already free while the boys are still there. When he finally made it home, he wasn’t prepared for the welcome he received: from the Belarusian border all the way to Chernihiv, people stood along the road holding Ukrainian flags to greet him.

“Ukrainian air heals, and Ukrainian people give strength”

says Mykolaienko, who also has firm views on Russia’s future. He believes the war will ultimately destroy the Russian Federation itself, adding:

“Personally, I plan to outlive the Russian Federation.”