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

Marina Perederii’s home in the small mining town of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine was her pride and joy.

17 Sadovaya Street was little more than a shell when she and her husband bought it.

They lovingly renovated the house, painting cherry blossoms and doves – symbols of love and well-being – in their bedroom. They built a swimming pool in the garden and a sauna in the basement.

“Everything was planned with a lot of passion,” she told the BBC World Service. But the peace would not last.

In February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Marina’s husband went to fight while she took her children and fled. Before fleeing, she recorded what she thought was her last glimpse of their home.

“My dear home, I don’t know if you will resist or not. I don’t know if we’ll ever come back here… or if we’ll survive,” she said in a video.

The next time she saw her home was a year later, in February 2023, through the eyes of a Russian soldier, in body camera footage posted on social media.

A Marine named Fima was in his living room, leafing through photos of Marina and her family. “Beautiful,” he said, looking at a photo.

It was a frightening image that made her angry. “I wish I had taken the albums with me,” says Marina.

Ukraine spent two and a half years defending Vuhledar before Russia took control of the city in early October.

During the long battle, in late January 2023, Fima led a group of soldiers into the suburbs and was caught in heavy fighting on Sadovaya Street. He and some others entered Marina’s house.

As his body camera footage went viral at home, Fima was hailed as a hero. Official documents show he was recalled from the front in February 2023 due to a leg injury.

But what the footage didn’t show was that the Russians were holding a Ukrainian soldier captive in Marina’s basement, who was starving and in desperate need of medical care. His name was Oleksii.

Before the war, Oleksii worked as an IT specialist. When Russia invaded his country, he volunteered to fight and later became a drone operator in Vuhledar. His love for dancing earned him the nickname Dancer.

When the Russians broke through the Ukrainian lines in late January 2023, Oleksii and his comrades tried to retreat, but some of them, including Oleksii, were shot.

Wounded, they were taken from house to house by Russian soldiers, and Oleksii ended up in the basement of Marina’s house.

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.

“New Zealand, New Zealand, it’s me!” Oleksii shouts at his colleague, who traveled to fight for Ukraine. Te Tai died in battle just two weeks later.

Oleksii was taken out of the house and to safety.

If he had stayed just a few more days, Oleksii says he would not have survived.

It is known that several other Ukrainian and Russian soldiers died on Sadovaya Street and the surrounding area during the battle for Vuhledar.

“Thank God Oleksii survived. But the fact that people died in my house shocked me,” she says. “There is only death there.”

The BBC World Service asked the Russian Ministry of Defense about Oleksii’s treatment but received no response.

Half a year after Oleksii’s rescue, his Russian captor was being praised at home. He was no longer known just by his call sign, Fima, but by his first name, Andrei. State television footage shows him reenacting the attack on Vuhledar and sharing his experiences with primary school children, where teachers present him as a hero.

The BBC compared this footage with photographs of Andrei from hundreds of social media profiles and found a match – the same hairline, the same mole on his neck and clear evidence of an injury to his leg.

His full name is Andrei Efimkin – a 28-year-old born in the Far East of Russia.

We contacted him and asked him about the Sadovaya Street video, especially where he flipped through photos of Marina’s family. He told us he was playing a “psychological trick” on himself over the shooting.

“I took the album and started looking at the photos to distract myself,” he said.

“You know, actually, I felt so cold. For a second, to be honest, these thoughts crossed my mind – about who lived here.”

But when asked directly about Marina, Efimkin said he didn’t want to answer any more questions and ended the call.

Marina is now in Germany. As time passes, she tries to build a new life, learn a new language and find work here and there – but still mourns the loss of her home in Vuhledar.

“It’s so difficult. I can still see my house in my dreams, it’s always in my head. I still hope that Ukraine wins and that everything will be fine, we will return”, he says.

“My land is there, the air is mine.”

But on Sadovaya Street there is almost nothing left of his beloved house, which is once again nothing more than a shell.

She can be recognized in drone footage taken from the air by a blue patch, where her swimming pool once stood, standing out against a backdrop of gray debris.