Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦@rshereme
“Why are the russians doing this to Ukraine? Because they can, because the world has allowed them to.”
Testimony of Taira (Yuliya Payevska) to the US Helsinki Commission. She was captured and imprisoned by russians on March 16, 2022 and released on June 17, 2022.
▪️ Taira about herself: "My name is Yuliya Payevska. By profession, I am a graphic designer, as well as the president of one of the Aikido federations of Ukraine. Russians call me a Nazi. This is what they call everyone who opposes them, or simply does not want to see russia in Ukraine. I spent the first 20 days of this war in Mariupol, which turned into hell. After that, I spent 3 months in russian captivity. And it was hell too."
▪️ About the proposal to commit suicide: "When my executioners suggested that I commit suicide, I said no. I wanted to see what would happen tomorrow, I wondered how far they would go in their madness and malice. And then one day, when it seemed that there was no hope, someone looked into the window and called my name. "Take your things and go out" — that's how my path to freedom began.
▪️About those who remained in russian captivity: "Pregnant prisoners whose fate is unknown neither to their families nor to the state. A soldier who was beaten for three hours and then thrown into the basement like a sack, and only a day later someone came to him."
▪️ About horrors in Mariupol: "A dead child in his mother's arms, a seven-year-old boy with a gunshot wound dying in my arms because I cannot stop his death. Prisoners screaming for weeks in their cells, dying of torture in hellish agony. I remember my friend's eyes, which I closed before his body went cold, and another friend, and another, and another... I saw half a million people dying under air strikes. Air strikes on hospitals and residential areas. A hospital full of wounded people, with no medicine. Surgeons and medical staff sleeping for three hours a day as operations followed one after another. Medical evacuation vehicles arriving every 5 to 10 minutes, with the living and the dead lying on top of each other. Cars that are on fire with people inside. Police officers pulling women and children from the rubble, mutilated beyond recognition. People collecting water from puddles. Dogs that were once pets dragging human limbs around the city."
▪️About questions from the executioner: "One of my executioners asked me: "Do you know why I do this to you?" I answered: "Because you can." He did not expect such an answer. But it is true. They do it because they can. Because their leaders told them they had the right to do so. Because once they were allowed to. Because the world gave them such permission. The world was silent, watching the crimes of the russians in Georgia, Syria and so on."
