- A Ukrainian medic smuggled footage of Mariupol’s scare to AP reporters before they left the city.
- Footage of Yuliia Paievska showed her caring for wounded Ukrainians – and even Russians.
- A day after she smuggled out the video, she was kidnapped by Russian forces. Her whereabouts are unknown.
Loading Something is loading.
A Ukrainian medic was captured by Russian forces in mid-March after smuggling out video evidence of the war’s devastation.
Yuliia Paievska — known in Ukraine as Taira — captured 256 gigabytes of harrowing and graphic footage from a helmet-mounted camera in Mariupol during the Russian siege of the city over a two-week period, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.
Taira, 53, gave the camera card to an AP team. The team of journalists — one of whom hid the evidence in a tampon — made their way through more than a dozen Russian checkpoints before escaping the strategic southern port city in a humanitarian convoy, the report said.
Taira was captured by Russian forces the next day, the report said. Russian channels aired a video of her, accusing her of trying to flee the city in disguise. She has not been seen since then.
Footage released in Thursday’s report documents Taira’s team’s efforts to save the lives of wounded Ukrainians — and even Russians.
A video showed a team of medics trying to save the life of a young boy. He didn’t survive and Taira turned away – put a bloody hand on a wall. The helmet material picked up sounds of her sobbing while medical equipment beeped in the background. Then she closed the boy’s eyes.
Another video released by the AP showed Taira pulling bloodied gloves from her hands before moving on to footage of her rushing down a hallway behind first responders as they pushed a stretcher.
The following image showed Taira tending to a man’s wounded and bloodied face – opening his eyelid with extreme caution while he took a deep breath.
Additional footage from Taira’s helmet cam showed a soldier being carried away on a stretcher, before cutting to a shot of a soldier’s bloodied face being bandaged by paramedics. In the next image, medics performed CPR on an unidentified person.
Since her kidnapping, a website has been released showing how long Taira has been in Russian captivity since March 16 – 65 days and counting. Efforts between Ukraine and Russia to include them in a prisoner swap have stalled.
Her husband, Vadim Puzanov, told the AP that he knew little to nothing about her whereabouts or her condition. The website said Russian state media tried to use Taira for disinformation and propaganda campaigns.
“To accuse a volunteer paramedic of all mortal sins, including organ trafficking, is already outrageous propaganda — I don’t even know who it’s for,” Puzanov said.
Doctors, hospitals and other health facilities were repeatedly attacked by Russian forces during the three-month war.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated how the camera footage was smuggled out of Mariupol, Ukraine. The camera card was given by the paramedic to a team of AP journalists, one of whom hid it in a tampon.