The struggle of a mom to rescue her POW son from Russian torture has a happy ending

Looking for good news overseas these days seems like a fool’s errand. So when a heartwarming ending emerged to a horrifying story I heard in June in Kyiv, I wanted to share it.

Call it the triumph of Mother Courage, the struggle of a mom to rescue her soldier son from captivity and torture inside Russia.

Imitating Hamas terrorists in Gaza, the Russian government provides little to no information about Ukrainian captives to their families, the International Committee of the Red Cross (known as the ICRC), or the Kyiv government. Yet, as we know from exchanged Ukrainian prisoners, the Russians torture military prisoners of war in a manner reminiscent of the Nazis.

When I sat down in a Kyiv restaurant with Milana Kompaniiets, a weary-looking, gray-haired doctor who had fought full time for more than two years for information about her 23-year-old son, Yurii Hulchuk, I thought I knew what to expect. The reality was even worse.

That reality defines the character of Vladimir Putin, the cold-blooded killer and former KGB spy who cleverly manipulates Donald Trump and MAGA politicians. Putin doesn’t give a damn about the lives of his own Russian soldiers — let alone about holding to Geneva Convention rules on treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war like Kompaniiets’ son

“My boy is a special person and a handsome young man,” Kompaniiets told me. He first studied math, but switched to the faculty of Chinese philology and planned to be a translator. However, in fall 2021, Hulchuk decided to join the marines because he felt a call to defend his country, and signed up shortly before the 2022 war started. He wound up in the Illich steelworks in Mariupol, among the last of its surviving defenders.

» READ MORE: Ukraine’s ‘Birdie,’ freed from captivity, recalls the horrors Russia inflicted on female POWs | Trudy Rubin

When the Mariupol fighters finally surrendered to the Russians in mid-April 2022, the ICRC promised them that they would be treated according to international law. That was the last time any Mariupol survivors saw any Red Cross officials. Ukrainian families are bitter that the organization has not pressed harder to overturn Russia’s refusal to grant them access.

The Russians also refused any information, or even permission to enter their country, to U.N. special rapporteur Alice Jill Edwards, who was investigating torture and other cruel treatment of prisoners of war. Based on interviews with returned prisoners in Ukraine, her report concluded that the Russian government had a policy of degrading treatment — including starvation, denial of medical help, beatings, rape, and worse.

After her son’s capture, Kompaniiets took time off from her job to “work only on my son.” She searched for information online, met with exchanged prisoners of war, spoke to the public on the streets while holding a sign, talked to parliament members, and coordinated with the Ukrainian center for prisoners of war.

The most sadistic move by Putin’s government was to distribute photos of the prisoners, alone or in groups — minus their names — to a depraved Russian military blogger who displays them online with sarcastic comments underneath.

“I had to look at all the photos. It was two of the most difficult weeks of my life,” Kompaniiets said. Finally, she found a photo with her son in the background looking frightened and starved. It was a sign that he might still be alive.

“I kept talking to every exchanged Ukrainian prisoner,” Kompaniiets continued, as she sought any further crumb of information. Finally, in January, she met a freed national guardsman who had shared a room with her son.

“We talked daily for hours. I found out the things that I, as a mother, shouldn’t have known,” she said, eyes downward. Her son was beaten constantly, finally to the point where he could no longer speak.

“I think it was a stroke after the beatings,” she said. “My son was fluent in English, Chinese, Polish, and was very verbal, and after this to not be able to speak …”

Kompaniiets put her head in her hands.

“They used electric shock to the genitals, and his legs became paralyzed. When I learned this, I could only cry and shout.” She stopped for a moment, then continued. “I never understood why Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the ‘evil empire.’ Now all of us understand this. In Russia, they bring the animal out of people. They want to eliminate all humanity.”

I’d add that that doesn’t apply to all Russians. But for czar-wannabe Putin, backed by his military and much of the brainwashed public, decency and rules of law appear to have no meaning. Moreover, individuals — whether Russian or Ukrainian — have no value to Putin other than their use in strengthening his personal power.

Yet, Kompaniiets never stopped searching. And here comes the good news. After Ukrainian forces invaded the Russian region of Kursk, they took many Russian conscript soldiers prisoner. Last weekend, some of those conscripts were exchanged for Mariupol survivors.

Yurii Hulchuk finally came home.

» READ MORE: Russia’s indiscriminate killing in Ukraine underlines that Putin only understands force | Trudy Rubin

I haven’t been able to reach his mother. But in a powerful video taken right after the prisoner exchange, he is seen walking clumsily and looking vacant-eyed. He can’t speak, but when a female soldier offers him a cell phone with his mother on the other end, he taps out, “Mama is as beautiful as always.”

In another video, when he finally, clumsily, is able to hug his mom, Kompaniiets holds him close and tells him: “We love you. Without you, we didn’t have a life.”

Looking at this video, I could only think of all the other families of Ukrainian prisoners of war who are desperately waiting for information the Russian government refuses to hand over. I also was reminded of the despair of Israeli families who are denied information by Hamas about their relatives who are still held hostage, and who have been abandoned by the Israeli government.

What is most infuriating is that Putin can get away with his war crimes. Despite Russia’s violation of core U.N. principles, his representative sits on the Security Council. The Russian strongman has already been charged at the International Criminal Court with the war crime of kidnapping Ukrainian children. The mistreatment and torture of prisoners of war should be added to the charges.

And any hypocritical U.S. politician who praises Putin (while damning Hamas) should be forced to look at the photos of tortured faces and dead bodies that Kompaniiets was forced to study just to learn if her son was alive.