Author: Sasha Vakulina
Published on: 19/02/2025 | 00:00:00
AI Summary:
Maksym Butkevych spent more than two years in Russian captivity. He enlisted in the Ukrainian military in February 2022, when Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In June 2022 he was captured by the Russian army near the occupied towns of Zolote and Hirske. Russia thinks it belongs to Moscow and has tried to take it back under its control. This reality, Butkevych says, is so inconsistent with “Russkiy Mir” or the “Russian World” it even caused anger in the way Russian prison guards treat Ukrainians. And this is why any meetings about Ukraine without Ukraine fall into the same line. Butkevych was held in a penal colony in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine. “everyone who is in the occupied territories is a hostage of the Russian regime,” he says. Inhuman rights in Russian captivity Over 90% of Ukrainian prisoners of war do not receive any visits. Russians are only mentioning the Geneva Convention as a tool for bullying and making false accusations. Butkevych says he heard about it twice when he was falsely accused of violating it. For the second time he saw a reference to Geneva Convention, but the fourth time to the treatment of civilians. Butkevych: “I know about the conditions of detention firsthand from my own experience” he says Ukraine needs to help protect these values of this system. “If, strictly hypothetically, Ukraine fails to achieve its goals without assistance from abroad, it will mean that the ‘Russian World’ will come to them”
Original: 1465 words
Summary: 249 words
Percent reduction: 83.00%