ロシアとの捕虜交換で帰還、ウクライナ兵の苦難

【ザポリージャＡＦＰ＝時事】レシア・コステンコさん（５１）は、ウクライナ兵の息子、フリブ・ストリジコさん（２５）がロシア軍の捕虜になったことは知っていた。だが、重傷を負った息子がこっそり電話をかけてくるまで、どこにいるのかは分からなかった。（写真はウクライナ・ザポリージャ市内の病院で治療を受けるウクライナ兵のフリブ・ストリジュコさん）
　「見張りの兵士が息子を哀れんでくれた」とコステンコさんはＡＦＰに語った。
　ストリジコさんは南東部マリウポリでの戦闘で、イリイチ製鉄所に駐留していた部隊に所属していた。激戦で命を落としかけ、捕虜となり、最終的にロシアに連行された。
　そして、ある日突然、捕虜交換のため飛行機に乗せられ、ウクライナに帰された。
　帰還へ向けた紆余（うよ）曲折は、ソーシャルメディアへのある投稿から始まった。
　ウクライナの親ロシア派がメッセージアプリのテレグラムに開設しているチャンネルに掲載された捕虜のリストの中に、ストリジコさんの写真があるのを戦友が発見。コステンコさんに知らせた。
　コステンコさんは恐怖におののきながらも、息子が生きていることを知っていくらか希望を抱いた。「戦友は、わが家の電話番号を知っていた。息子が教えていた。まるで、こうなることを予期していたかのように」

■ロシア側は否定
　ストリジコさんは４月１０日、戦車の砲撃を受けてがれきの下敷きとなった。所属部隊に救出されて病院に運ばれたが、そこでロシア軍に捕らえられた。
　ストリジコさんは現在、南部ザポリージャ市の病院で骨盤、顎、片目の大けがの治療を受けている。
　ロシア軍の捕虜になってからは、あちこち移動させられたと語った。まず連れていかれたのは、ロシアとの国境に近い南東部ノボアゾウスクだった。「病院で横になっていたが、まともな治療はされなかった」
　約１週間後、東部ドネツクの病院に移された。そこで、驚くべきことに、自宅に電話をかける機会を得た。
　連絡を受けた家族は、ストリジコさんの解放を目指し、ウクライナ政府への働き掛けを始めた。イリーナ・ベレシチューク副首相は、「閣僚として手助けしてほしいと、母親や兄弟、友人たちから連絡があった」と話す。
　ベレシチューク氏は、ストリジコさんの身柄をロシア人捕虜と交換するようロシア側に圧力をかけた。だが、ロシアは捕虜の中にストリジコさんがいることをなかなか認めなかった。
　ベレシチューク氏が、ストリジコさんがドネツク１５番病院に入院していることを把握しているとロシア側に突きつけたことから、「ロシア側は身柄引き渡しに応じざるを得なくなった」という。
　ドネツクで１週間ほど過ごした後、ストリジコさんは再びロシア兵によって移動させられた。次の行き先は刑務所だと言われた。毛布に包まれた状態で運ばれ、バスの床に寝かせられ、とても痛い思いをした。しかし、結局、重傷のため退院させられなかったようだと語った。
　「しばらくバスの中にいた。それから救急車に押し込まれ、ロシア国境に向かった」とストリジコさん。目的地は車で１時間ほどのロシア南部タガンログだと聞かされた。

■涙の帰還
　ストリジコさんの捕虜生活の話から、ロシア側の無関心と冷酷さがうかがえる。
　医師たちが職務をおおむね遂行していた。一方、ある女性看護師はロシア語でストリジコさんを罵倒し、自力で食べられないと知りながらベッド脇に食事を置いていった。「看護師はしばらくして戻ってくると、『もう終わりでしょ』と言って食事を下げてしまった」
　また、病院では常に監視下にあったが、見張りの兵士が恐ろしかった。
　ある兵士は、ストリジコさんの素肌にナイフの刃を当ててなぞるように動かし、「耳をそいだり、ウクライナ人が捕虜にやるようにお前を切り裂いたりしてみたい」と脅してきた。実際にナイフを突き立てられることはなかったが、ぞっとした。
　タガンログ行きだと教えられた救急車は、実際には空港に向かっていた。ストリジコさんは他の負傷者や捕虜たちと共に両手を縛られ、粘着テープで目隠しをされて、数時間後には空の上にいた。
　捕虜交換が行われると知ったのは、クリミアに着いてからだ。４月２８日のことだった。
　ロシア兵はストリジコさんと重傷を負ったウクライナ兵３人を車に乗せ、交換場所へ連れていった。その場所がどこかは明らかにされず、１キロほど走ったところでストリジコさんは「とても怖くなった」という。「何が起こるか分からなかった。ロシア兵は何もかもをなかったことにするかもしれないと思った」
　「待ち構えていたバスに乗ると、運転手が言った。『皆さん、もう息をして大丈夫。ここは祖国だ』。それを聞いて号泣してしまった」
　母親のコステンコさんは捕虜交換のことは聞いていたものの、ベレシチューク副首相から電話連絡を受けるまで詳細は知らなかった。「電話を取り落として、泣いた」と語った。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2022/05/18-14:55）

Ukrainian soldier Glib Stryzhko's mother knew he'd fallen into Russian hands but it wasn't until her gravely wounded 25-year-old son made a secret phone call to her that she found out where he was.
One of his guards took pity on him, she told AFP.
That small mercy, as well as details of his experience -- including a tormentor's knife and a painfully long kilometre -- offer a window into the dramatic but often obscured reality of war prisoner exchanges.
Nearly killed in intense fighting in the key port city of Mariupol, Stryzhko was captured in April and eventually taken to Russia before suddenly being put on a plane and sent towards home with others to be swapped for Russian prisoners.
After we were loaded onto the bus waiting for us, the driver said: 'Guys, you can breathe. You are home now,' Stryzhko said from his hospital bed in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.
Then I started to cry very hard.
Getting to that point took just weeks, a remarkably short timeline among war captives, whose fates have always been part of an emotional, high-stakes and sometimes political process that can go on long after the shooting has stopped.
In Ukraine's case, over 350 of its troops have been freed so far in swaps, which happen on a one-for-one basis between people of the same rank, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told AFP.
Stryzhko's twisting route home started on social media. A comrade happened to spot him on a Telegram channel where pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine post images of captured enemy soldiers.
The comrade called Stryzhko's mother, who was horrified to hear the news but somehow hopeful now she knew her son was alive.
This man had our phone number. Glib had given it to him, as if he was expecting this to happen, his mother Lesia Kostenko, 51, told AFP. That was when we started to look.
Her son was posted at the Ilych steelworks in the thick of the battle for Mariupol. That conflict attracted global attention because of the civilians trapped in another steel plant, Azovstal.
- Russian denials -
Stryzhko was hit by a tank shell and buried under rubble on April 10 before his unit got him to a hospital, where he said he was taken prisoner.
Now recovering from massive injuries to his pelvis, jaw and one eye, Stryzhko explained how his captors shuttled him and other prisoners around, first to Novoazovsk, near the Russian border.
We were lying there in the hospital and we weren't receiving any serious treatment, he said.
He was there for about a week before being moved to a hospital in Donetsk, where, incredibly, he ended up getting access to a phone and called home.
During the first call he told us where he was, his mother said.
Word of the call spread to other families of POWs and they started asking her to see if Stryzhko knew anything about their captive loved ones. He didn't.
The family also lobbied the government for help getting Stryzhko back, including the deputy prime minister.
His relatives contacted me and asked my help as a minister -- his mother, his brother, his friends. They were all looking for him, Vereshchuk said.
The minister said she pressured the Russians to exchange Stryzhko but they refused to admit he was in their custody until she confronted them with the knowledge he was in Donetsk Hospital 15.
After that they were forced to hand him over, Vereshchuk said.
After about a week in Donetsk, Stryzhko said the Russians were moving him yet again. This time it was to prison, he was told.
There followed more painful movement and jostling. He was carried in a blanket, then laid on the floor of a bus, but in the end it seemed he was too seriously injured to be out of hospital.
He would be moved again.
I stayed in the bus for some time. Then they put me in an ambulance and the next stop was the Russian border, Stryzhko said. He was told they were headed for Taganrog, about an hour's drive from Ukraine.
- 'Crying, again' -
When Stryzhko talked about his experience with his captors, a thread emerged of both indifference and a certain cruelty.
He said the doctors mostly did their medical duties but there was a nurse who cursed him in Russian and left meals by his bedside, knowing he couldn't feed himself.
Then the nurse came back and said 'You're all done, then?' and took the food away, he said.
He was constantly under guard in hospital, yet the guards themselves could be terrifying.
He recounted how one ran a knife along his skin but never plunged it in, issuing the chilling threat: 'I would love to cut off your ear or to cut you like Ukrainians cut our prisoners'.
What Stryzhko didn't know but would shortly learn was that his time in Russia would be brief.
The ambulance taking him to Taganrog was in fact heading to an airport. Within hours he was in the air, with other wounded people and captives whose hands were tied and whose eyes were covered with duct tape.
Once on the ground in Crimea he learned they would be exchanged. It was April 28.
The Russians drove him and three other gravely injured Ukrainians to the undisclosed site of the exchange. The two sides were about a kilometre (roughly half a mile) apart.
When we passed that one kilometre I was so scared because who knows what can happen? They may cancel the whole thing, Stryzhko said. But soon he was aboard a Ukrainian bus and in tears.
His mother had an idea this was coming but no details, until Vereshchuk called with the news.
I dropped my phone. And started crying again, she said.