‘The Russians broke into my house and held a Ukrainian soldier prisoner there’

He was held captive for almost a month – Russian footage posted online shows him curled up in one of Marina’s rugs.

When the Russian soldiers finally retreated, they left Oleksii behind. In total he spent 46 days at Marina’s house and during much of that time he had almost no food or water.

Injured, hungry and dehydrated, he was unable to leave the building.

“I managed to find some crumbs on the floor,” he told the BBC World Service from Kiev.

“There was a piece of biscuit that a mouse stole from me at night. I hid it and the mouse probably stole it because I couldn’t find it.”

But hunger was nothing compared to thirst. One day, after the Russians left, the desperate need for water almost killed Oleksii.

He tore out panels from the sauna in the hope that there might be water inside the pipes. He managed to open one of them and drank some of the liquid inside, but it was antifreeze. These few sips caused internal burns and were almost fatal.

Then, in March of that year, when Ukrainian forces retook parts of Vuhledar and reached Sadovaya Street, another video of Marina’s house went viral. It shows former New Zealand soldier Kane Te Tai entering number 17 and meeting Oleksii.