Featured Image Credit: Olena Zolotariova/Facebook
Topics: Ukraine, Russia, World News
Britt Jones
Images showing the difference in a man who was taken captive as a Russian prisoner of war have been released, and his physical transformation is chilling.
Oleksandr Strafun is a Ukrainian reserve officer who was defending Mariupol at the time of his capture in 2022.
It was the beginning of the Russian invasion, and he had been attempting to stave off intruders from his area.
Strafun was living with his wife, Olena, and worked at the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works.
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While he had not participated in the eastern Ukraine fight since 2014, when Russia invade, he felt as though he had to protect his country once the invasion began.
But little did he know what was to come.
Volunteer Olena Zolotariova from the NGO Power of People, published before and after photos of Strafun and Olena to show just how much he physically changed within three years of being captured and released.
In the first image, the soldier looked healthy and happy, wearing traditional Ukrainian clothing and donning dark hair and facial hair.
But in the after image, he looks almost unrecognisable with a sickly thin frame, shaved white hair, gaunt features and ashen skin.
His image sparked many to speculate just what he had been put through at the hands of his captors.
According to the UN, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations, Ukrainian prisoners held in Russian captivity are subjected to systematic and widespread torture.
This includes beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, sexual violence and prolonged stress positions.
The Organizations claim that prisoners are malnourished and are usually denied medical care, with prisoners also being isolated and tortured in private.
Strafun began his nightmare on 22 February when he contacted military recruitment offices to offer his service.
“He always knew that if something suddenly started, he had no right to stay home,” Olena shared as per her interview with 0629 news outlet.
She explained he told her to evacuate the area, but she declined, citing that their two cats and his parents needed her help.
He then became a member of the defence on 25 February, and one day later he called his wife and declared that he’d be gone.
“He said he wouldn’t return home anymore. I asked, when should I expect you? And he answered: ‘I’ll return after victory’,” Olena said.
On March 1, they had their last conversation when he requested soap and socks to be delivered, however, Olena was unable to bring them to him before contact went cold.
When the area was being attacked by Russia, Olena was hiding in blockaded Mariupol and her mobile phone had been stolen by Kadyrov forces.
But once she was safe, she connected with families of prisoners of war and learned that her husband had been spotted at the notorious Olenivka detention facility in Donetsk Oblast.
Sadly, on 29 July, an explosion struck a barracks at the Olenivka prison colony, killing 50 Ukrainian prisoners and injuring over 70 others.
Olena had managed to pass her number through to the facility via the wife of another prisoner and talk to her husband just one day before the attack, where he told her that something was going on.
“He said something strange was happening in the colony, some constant movements. Some people were being taken away, others relocated. He thought, maybe this is already an exchange?” Olena explained.
The next morning she woke up to the news of the explosion, but thankfully her husband was alive and managed to call her and told her that he was due to be exchanged.
Sadly, that wouldn’t happen until three years later and he was then returned home to Ukraine during a prisoner exchange.
But her husband looked like a different man.
People online were shocked, with one Redditor commenting: "he looks like my grandfather before my grandfather passed of heart disease. It’s pretty wild how white his hair went. I hope he can recover with nutrition and his long term issues are manageable."