Anna Purtova is a member of the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) and head of the Permanent Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (PABSEC). Purtova is also involved in digital education projects and in matters relating to the return, rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners of war, detained civilians and veterans.
What does your work with prisoners of war involve?
Before anything else, I want to thank the Italian people. Since the very first day of the full-scale war you have stood with Ukraine: with air defence systems that save lives, with humanitarian aid, with families who opened their homes to our women and children. You did not get tired of us and you did not turn away. We feel this support every day, and Ukrainians will never forget it.
I work with the families of the disappeared and also of those held captive. But to understand the scale of the problem, we need to talk about figures: official data indicate that there are more than 114,000 people who have disappeared, and we do not know whether they are being held captive or have been killed by Russia. According to the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which was signed in 1949 by most countries after the Second World War – including the USSR, to which Russia is the successor state – it sets out how countries must treat those held in captivity. One of the most basic obligations is to register the captives and give their names to their families, but Russia fails to do so, and we can only imagine the anguish of the families who spend years not knowing whether their loved one is alive or dead. Mothers and wives have to go to bed every night with this uncertainty and listen to their children asking about their fathers. According to Ukraine’s Ombudsman, more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians are missing, and many of them may be held in Russian captivity.
How many have been rescued from captivity?
We have rescued around 10,000 adults from Russian captivity, of whom 8,800 are soldiers and 900 are civilians, as well as more than 2,500 children.
Russia does not allow international organizations, such as the Red Cross, to verify the conditions of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
No, there is no monitoring whatsoever, and that is the major difference compared with Ukraine. We give the Red Cross and the UN access to Russian prisoners. That is why the world knows the conditions they are held in. Russia lets no one in. Our problem is that we know nothing about our prisoners – neither their names nor the conditions they are in – and their families cannot even send them a note or a letter to show them they care.
Prisoners are protected by international law, but if the world accepts what Russia is doing to our prisoners, these rules will cease to apply to everyone. This is not a matter of cruelty on the part of a few individual guards; it is a Russian state policy designed to circumvent international law. Neither we nor anyone else in the world can accept this, because tomorrow the Geneva Convention will lose its raison d’être. The same conventions protect Italian and Spanish soldiers serving in peacekeeping missions around the world.
The rules exist, but there are no consequences for breaking them. That is why we are working on the Kyiv Protocols: if a state refuses access to prisoners, it must pay a concrete price. Without registration there is no exchange. A person who is on no list cannot be brought home. And any peace agreement without a separate section on the return of all prisoners, civilians and children is not peace. It is only paper.
When they are sent back to Ukraine, many of the returnees look as though they have just come out of a concentration camp and report having been tortured. What process do they go through once they return to Ukrainian territory?
On their return, they must spend a month in a special reintegration center where two things take place. Firstly, a medical check-up, as many of them have serious health problems due to the torture they suffered whilst in captivity. One of the most common problems is starvation, as they were never given enough food. There are many accounts of how the guards tortured them with food, serving them boiling soup and giving them just 30 seconds to eat – something that is impossible. As a result, strong men who previously weighed 100 kilos return home weighing just 50 or 60 kilos. Another serious problem is heart and cardiovascular health, as they have suffered a great deal of stress and been tortured through sleep deprivation, being woken up several times every night. They also suffer from many dental problems, and many have lost teeth as a result of beatings by the guards. Once the medical check-up has been carried out, a decision is made as to whether they can continue on their way or need to stay in hospital for longer. The second part involves psychological support.
In an advert about the return of prisoners, a soldier comes home to his wife. When they are in bed, he lies down to sleep on the floor because his mind is still in prison. Some soldiers have spent years in captivity – how are they helped to get their old lives back?
Returning home is the first step, but the hard work begins afterwards, because the most difficult thing is not what you can see, but what is going on in the minds of those returning: they cannot close doors because it was forbidden in prison, or sleep alone because in their cells they slept in a group. That is why psychological support is so important for them – and also for their families, who have spent years without hearing anything from them and must now learn to live with them, know how to talk to them, help them organize their lives and avoid loud noises. Honestly, our system is still not perfect, and we have to support many of them not just for months, but for years, so that they can be with their families and return to normal life as soon as possible, get back to work and interact with others. Unfortunately, we now have a great deal of experience in this field, and I hope we won’t have to share that experience and that no other country has to go through the same thing.
I understand that returning to work is a key part of the process. Is the aim of getting them back into the jobs they had before the war? Do some of them return to the front line?
This work is very important because it is not enough to free them from captivity; we have to free their minds from captivity. As soon as they are ready, we have various options to decide what to do. Firstly, they get ninety days of paid leave to be with their families. After that, they decide whether they wish to return to the army or to civilian life. Some, even after years in captivity, choose to return to combat, whilst others opt for civilian life. Of the latter, if any wish to take up a new profession, they are provided with free training in that field. Another option is to start a small business or run a small farm; in such cases, free advice is also available, and there are small government grants to help them get started.
There was a truly heartbreaking case of a young soldier who wouldn’t speak and could barely recognize his mother. I believe he has made progress and is speaking again, and that wouldn’t have been possible without the support of his family. Is it possible to prepare a family to cope with a situation like that?
No one is prepared for something like this, and the role of the family – especially the women – in these cases is enormous. Many soldiers would not have returned home without the intervention of wives and mothers who have approached international organizations, such as the Red Cross or even the US Congress, to draw attention to this situation. They also search Facebook and Telegram channels for photos of prisoners to identify them.
Many children had never seen their fathers because they weren’t born when they were captured, and the situations they face are very difficult, but I’m proud of our women because they’re doing a magnificent job of helping throughout this process.
Have there been many suicide cases amongst those who have returned?
It’s a painful question and, to be honest, I don’t have the figures. It all depends to a large extent on the family situation; if everything is fine, it’s much easier to return to a normal life, but if the situation is bad – because family members have died or their home has been destroyed by bombing – it can be very difficult to start over. But captivity does not end on the day of the exchange. Torture keeps killing after release if a person is left alone. Our task is to make sure no one is left alone: long-term psychological help, brothers in arms who went through the same thing, 24-hour hotlines for veterans and their families. And this is also why those who ordered the torture must be held accountable.
You are also involved in educational projects. We can see that Russia has no qualms about bombing schools – what is it like to go through a school year under bombardment and drone attacks?
For me, and probably for most of us, this is the worst period of the entire war. Russia has started using jet-powered drones that reach high speeds and, even when an air-raid siren sounds, they leave us with only a few minutes to react. This began in September and our school term started on the 1st, so we’re working through it. Every school must have a shelter so that the children can take cover inside, because attacks also occur during the day and there is almost no time to react. In other cases, lessons are organized via Zoom, as was done during the Covid pandemic.
To take the children to school, we wait until there is no alert, and if an attack occurs, lessons continue in the shelter. If there are too many pupils for the shelter, two shifts are organized for lessons. However, with such stress, it is not possible to teach as normal. I teach at university myself and I can see how difficult it is for students to study in these circumstances, and the quality of teaching suffers. You can imagine what it’s like, and on top of that we have a generation of students who completed their university degrees during the war.
How are the children adapting to this new school?
It’s tough for them and, unfortunately, they’ve had to grow up faster. Of course, just like adults, not everyone reacts to fear in the same way, but you’d be surprised to speak to six- or seven-year-olds who know where to go, how to hide, or how to make decisions as if they were adults. They all carry an emergency rucksack to school containing water, snacks and warm clothes, and they know where to keep it, who to call and what to do if anything happens to their parents. A child shouldn’t have to know what to do if their parents are killed, but they have the numbers of other relatives in case anything happens. Ukrainian children have adapted and are prepared for a life that I wouldn’t wish on any child in the world. And then there are the children of prisoners of war or the missing, who have no information whatsoever about the fate of their fathers and mothers. They, too, are adapting, but it is very difficult.
And there are children Russia has taken away. Thousands of Ukrainian children are now in Russia. They are being re-educated, their language, their history, sometimes even their names are changed. Bringing back every one of them is the same duty as bringing back every prisoner.
I would like to thank Spain and Italy for having always supported us since the start of the war, and I would also like to highlight the role of the Vatican, which has approached the Red Cross and Russia to plead on behalf of our prisoners of war and missing persons. The value of the family in Italy is just as important as it is in Ukraine, and I would ask you to pray for our missing persons and for the return of the captives to their homes. I also have one request for every reader. Take the name of one Ukrainian held in Russian captivity. Just one. Speak about him, write about him on social media, ask: where is he, why is he not home yet? Russia is counting on the world falling silent. When the whole world knows a prisoner’s name, it is much harder to make him disappear.
