A Ukrainian journalist shares his story of survival in Russian captivity

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“The Kremlin stole my life.”

That’s how Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khyliuk sums up his feelings after his release from three years’ imprisonment in a Russian correctional colony.

His homecoming on Ukraine’s Independence Day, Aug. 24, was bittersweet. Although he is finally free, he told The Globe and Mail in a recent interview that the memory of 1,271 days of physical and psychological suffering will stay with him forever.

Mr. Khyliuk, 47, and his 74-year-old father, Vasyl, were arrested near their home in Kozarovychi in the Kyiv region on March 3, 2022. The men were separated. His father was put through a fake execution. Russian soldiers fired their shots around him, then dragged the terrified man into a dark basement, Mr. Khyliuk said. A year later, he learned from another prisoner that his father had returned home to his wife, Halyna, who thought both of them had been killed.

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Mr. Khyliuk, who covered politics for the UNIAN news agency for more than eight years, is a civilian who never served in the military due to health issues, yet he was registered as a prisoner of war. On March 16, 2022, he was sent to Narovlya, Belarus, where Russian soldiers held approximately 80 civilians and 20 military personnel, all of whom had prisoner-of-war cards. Later, in a Russian colony, he was in a cell with 15 men, including mobilized servicemen from Mariupol and civilians from Kyiv, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. The youngest prisoner was 17, and the oldest was 70.

Although humanitarian law prohibits the detention of civilians, many thousands remain in captivity.

Mr. Khyliuk was first held in Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 2 in Novozybkov, Bryansk Oblast, on March 18, 2022. One year later he was transferred to Correctional Labour Colony No. 7 in Pakino, Vladimir Oblast.

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The ex-prisoner described his interrogations as illogical and based on false accusations, such as witnessing events in Luhansk in 2014, a city he had never visited. During one interrogation, a Russian investigator asked him where Ukraine manufactured chemical and biological weapons, even though the existence of such weapons is one of the baseless Russian propaganda claims used to justify the invasion.

“No one made any accusations or expressed any suspicions about me. They didn’t explain why I was there, either officially or unofficially,” Mr. Khyliuk said.

Daily abuse was routine. “We crawled around on our hands and knees like seals on the tile floor while the guards beat us.” Ukrainian soldiers were treated particularly poorly. Mr. Khyliuk recalls incessant screaming, and he remembers a 21-year-old soldier, Pavlo, from the Kirovohrad region who hanged himself after months of torture.

Medical care was nonexistent. Mr. Khyliuk was attacked twice by dogs provoked by guards, and his wounds were infected for several months. In the colony, he met prisoners who had untreated diabetes, epilepsy, scabies and post-operative wounds.

In addition to physical abuse, the prisoners were subjected to psychological torture. Music from Soviet films and cartoons blared from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. “What began as an annoying soundtrack soon became psychological suffering,” Mr. Khyliuk said.

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Prisoners were prohibited from speaking Ukrainian and were threatened with violence. Guards shouted orders and obscenities. Making eye contact with them was strictly forbidden. All the Russians wore balaclavas to hide their identities. The prisoners were forced to bend over and keep their hands behind their backs. “Head down, hands up!” was the constant command.

For food, they were served watery gruel, diluted cabbage, and sometimes a few grains of rice. Their hunger didn’t subside. “We sometimes fainted from it,” Mr. Khyliuk said. The guards even used food as a punishment. One cell was left without bread for a week after a prisoner saved a few slices to eat later.

Mr. Khyliuk, who is 174 cm tall, lost 25 kilograms in two years. He was reduced to “skin and bones.”

Conditions briefly improved after a scandal. On May 31, 2024, Roman Gorilyk, a Chornobyl guard, returned from Russian captivity emaciated. “Fellow prisoners were forced to write false statements claiming that Gorilyk had refused food,” Mr. Khyliuk said. Soon after, rations increased.

In a resolution issued in July, the European Parliament noted that more than 70,000 Ukrainians, including civilians and children, are officially missing and that approximately 16,000 civilians are being held captive by Russians.

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During the 68 prisoner exchanges, Ukraine has repatriated more than 6,000 people, but only 220 of them were civilians. According to international humanitarian law, soldiers can be exchanged, but civilians cannot. The Fourth Geneva Convention specifically prohibits the detention and exchange of civilians alongside combatants. Nevertheless, Russia persistently violates these terms by abducting civilians, concealing their identities, and refusing to disclose their locations.

On Aug. 24, 2025, Ukraine and Russia exchanged 146 prisoners, including Mr. Khyliuk. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian military personnel from the Armed Forces, the National Guard, and the State Border Guard Service, as well as civilians held captive since 2022, returned home. The exchange took place with the mediation of the United Arab Emirates.

Now that he is free, Mr. Khyliuk is recovering both physically and emotionally. He has returned home, where his parents had been waiting for him all this time. Although he tested negative for serious infectious diseases, his thyroid gland is damaged, and he is undergoing rehabilitation. He is learning to live again and is grateful for the small things: a toothbrush, his own towel, a bed and privacy.

He plans to return to journalism to raise awareness of the plight of Ukrainians in Russian captivity and help bring them home.

“I want the entire international community to ask Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, ‘Why are innocent Ukrainian civilians being tortured in your country? Why are there disabled people in your prisons who cannot even get out of bed unaided?’”