The occupiers threw him out into the field after torturing him for five days in the basement. They took him out in the middle of the night and left among the mined vineyards. The man found the town of Beryslav, his home, and where he had to go by looking at the stars and the outline of the Kakhovka HPP in the distance. But everything around him was mined…
Suddenly, right in front of him, a wild predator – a raccoon dog – jumped out of the woods, because these steppes are the animal’s natural habitat! The predator seemed to look the man straight in the eyes, and then, as if inviting him to follow, turned around and walked through the mined vineyards toward Beryslav. The man followed the animal step by step… This predator, this wild animal, guided him between the mines and saved him from the invaders.
Oleh Diadiun told us his story, confiding both his worst memories and happiest feelings as he talked about his rescue. Even in the darkest times, there are always people who are ready to fight. Oleh Diadiun is one of them. A person who survived the horrors of Russian occupation, torture and inhumane conditions of Russian captivity. Nevertheless, Oleh has preserved his faith and love – both for Ukraine and for his hometown of Beryslav. Oleh’s story is a story of fortitude and invincibility of the Ukrainian people.
Before and after
“I’ve been a deputy of the Beryslav city council three times, twice as head of the budget committee, and I always represented not big parliamentary parties, but small Ukrainian, national parties. In 2020, I set up a company, and we signed agreements with rural communities near Beryslav to hold various festivals there,” says Oleh Diadiun. “We also brought new, better equipment for the school catering system, for village passport offices. But the occupiers looted it all, stole everything and took it to their beggarly Russian settlements.”
Just before the full-scale invasion, on February 22, 2022, Oleh organized a working meeting of the village council with representatives of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. At the meeting, they agreed to start reconstructing the sewage system in two villages of the Beryslav district and signed a relevant agreement.
“On February 24, at about five in the morning, my adult daughter and two little grandchildren woke up to explosions in Kakhovka,” Oleg recalls. “Our apartment is in a five-story building, right on the banks of the Dnipro. And we can see the Kakhovka HPP right from our window. I turned on the television (I had a satellite dish) and saw Putin’s speech about the beginning of his so-called Special military operation for the ‘liberation’ of Ukraine. I realized that the war had begun.”
The outbreak of the war and life under occupation
At six in the morning, Oleh, like many other men, were already at the door of the Territorial center for recruitment. There were dozens of men who had served in the ATO and were ready to mobilize to defend their city immediately.
“But there was no one from the local government there,” Oleh recalls. “My military friend said that he had only one pistol and one assault rifle for the entire military commissariat. And no one knew what to do next. No one received any orders from the military leadership or from the regional authorities. That is, there were no instructions. So we agreed to meet again later.”
According to Oleh, around 11:00 a.m., an order came from Kherson that all those who could fight had to arrive in the regional center immediately.
“But something had to be done on the ground as well. The district state administration building was closed. For the first time in my life, I saw what anarchy is…” says Oleh. “From the balcony of my apartment, I saw helicopters flying over the Kakhovka HPP, which had already been seized. And it was only 6 hours after the full-scale war started! A friend called from Chaplynka – it was also already completely encircled.”
On February 25, fighting began near the checkpoint in Shylova Balka. But this place is in the lowlands, and the occupiers could see our defenders well. That’s why they used aviation and constantly bombed…
On February 25-26, Russian military vehicles – tanks and Grad systems – entered Beryslav.
“They positioned themselves right between the residential buildings and prepared to fire, turning their guns towards the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” says Oleh. “Our grandmas went out into the yards, made a ruckus and tried to drive the tanks and Grads away, convincing the occupiers that they had no right to shoot from playgrounds. But the Russians, like madmen, kept repeating the same thing – that they “had come to protect and liberate” us. So, on February 25, Russian checkpoints were set up at all exits from Beryslav, and no one was allowed in or out. There was no way to get to Kherson.”
That’s how the occupation began on February 25. The invaders disabled all Ukrainian television, but thanks to his satellite dish, Oleh could watch all the true news and tell others about it.
People began to panic about a possible famine and within a few days all the food in the stores was sold out, and all the money was withdrawn from ATMs.
“In late March, when every family was running out of food, it became clear that the food blockade would be very tough,” Oleh recalls. “Beryslav was saved from starvation by the Roma! They were the first to manage to bring food to the town, and they sold it. And the prices were reasonable.”
On March 8, Oleg and his friends gathered people on the central square in Beryslav. They came to the rally with Ukrainian flags, posters and slogans: “Beryslav is Ukraine, the Kherson region is Ukraine.”
“At the same time, the mayor of the city was yelling at me on the phone, saying that I was provoking the Russians to take tough actions, and demanded that we leave,” Oleh says. “But we held the rally, even though there weren’t many of us, about 50 people.”
Here is what a resident of Beryslav wrote about the rally on the same day on her social media page:
Olena Taran March 8, 2022 “Beryslav is Ukraine! March 8, 2022. Right now. A rally is taking place on the central square in Beryslav, under the slogan “Beryslav is Ukraine”. People gathered with flags and homemade posters. The participants laid flowers at the pedestal with the national flag. They sang the national anthem. People chanted that Beryslav is Ukraine, there were calls about the Russian ship and Russian soldiers and the direction they should go (let me remind you – go f**k themselves). The next time Beryslav residents will gather on March 11. This day is traditionally celebrated as the day of the city’s liberation from the Nazi invaders. And people will demand that the Russian fascists get out of Ukraine.”
Oleh recalls with disdain that there were people in Beryslav who welcomed the occupiers – they liked the “hard hand”, force, weapons. However, there were very few such people.
“But what struck me the most was May 9. On that day, I went to see how the occupiers would celebrate this day and was stunned: one of my old friends was running towards the Russians, grabbing the Russian flag and waving it, Oleh recalls. “Among the ‘victors’ with tricolors and orange-black ribbons were also some local Berylslav deputies, activists and leaders of some NGOs, such as the Beryslav Renaissance. Unfortunately, there were some who wanted to take up leadership positions in the new occupation Russian administration. For example, the principal of Beryslav Pedagogical School. Some of these collaborators still remain in Ukraine. I don’t understand why the SBU has no interest in these individuals.”
I had to save my wife, daughter and little grandchildren
In April 2022, heavy fighting began in the vicinity of Davydiv Brid. One day, when he saw children getting scared and hiding under the table during the explosions, Oleh arranged to hire a bus for evacuation. Of course, only for women and children. The occupiers allowed children and women to leave Beryslav via Davydiv Brid to the free territory of Ukraine. If there was at least one elderly man on the bus, he was searched and interrogated for a long time, and the whole bus could simply not be allowed to pass.
“On April 13, my friends and I sent our women and children to the Ukrainian government-controlled territory. First to Kryvyi Rih, then by train to Lviv. And then my family left to live with friends in Italy. And I calmed down a little,” recalls Oleh.
In June, the information blockade in occupied Beryslav was especially severe: the Internet was down, telephones didn’t work, Ukrainian radio and television were disabled, there was no information from free Ukraine. And the occupiers used all means to spread the information that they had already taken Kyiv. And here the ‘dish’ saved the day again: Oleh knew the truth and passed it on by word of mouth.
“The war was a real shock for me. I couldn’t believe in such a war in the 21st century, but it was important for me to understand whether it would happen again, as with Crimea. Well, I mean when there was no military team to defend it, Oleh admits. “Why do we need such an army? And when I saw our army fighting on the first day of the war, I realized that Ukraine would defend itself, that it would not be broken, and that was our victory. But I was not fully aware of how crazy the ‘Kremlin Fuhrer’ was and that he was not going to stop”.
From April to June, Beryslav turned into a kind of logistics center for people leaving to the free territory of Ukraine. Oleh and other activists received 6-7 thousand refugees from various occupied territories per day. The man had two apartments where future IDPs stayed for several days while waiting for the occupiers’ permission to leave. But already in June, after the Russians shelled the refugee convoy in Davydiv Brid, after the occupiers blew up the bridges, everything was over. And this road “to freedom” was cut short.
To the basement
In early July, at about 7 a.m., the man woke up because someone had slammed the door of his apartment.
“I went out of bed into the corridor, and there were Russian soldiers standing there. With shields, helmets, machine guns and body armor. They came so bravely to arrest me! And I came out to them in just my underwear,” says Oleh, laughing. “In short, they stripped me completely, looking for ‘Nazi’ tattoos. When they didn’t find any, they started searching the house. It was like in old Soviet movies about searches conducted by the Gestapo or NKVD. They took away all the phones – my wife’s old phone and mine. They took away two of my grandchildren’s tablets, found my wife’s tablet and began to ask for its password. And I simply didn’t know it, as a matter of principle, because it’s my wife’s personal space. And this outraged the Russian occupiers the most. They didn’t understand this, because they probably live by the rules of a wild medieval Muscovite family order. They were so angry that they smashed that tablet on my head. Literally. But that was just the beginning. Then, for the first time in my life, I felt how a stun gun works. I didn’t even realize how I ended up on the floor, almost exhausted. Meanwhile, the pillagers looted: they simply took all the money in the house, all the jewelry of my wife and daughter, everything they liked. They just robbed. Later, my neighbors told me that on the second day after my arrest, they came again and stole what they couldn’t take during the arrest. On the second day, they even took away our clothes. Derelicts, what else can I say?”
During the search, the occupiers beat Oleh severely, but before leaving the apartment, they made him wash off the blood and get dressed.
“An armored personnel carrier and a KamAZ truck were parked at the entrance, they blindfolded me and took me somewhere near the North Crimean Canal, where they had an underground torture chamber,” Oleh recalls.
According to him, unlike the police, where police officers, including collaborators, were in charge, interrogations in the torture chamber were conducted by FSB officers who had arrived.
“They brought me and immediately threw me into a two-by-two-meter cell. The cell served as a storage room in a former water pumping station,” Oleh continues. “One man was already there. He was an ex-convict with a nickname Kartyna (Painting), because he had tattoos all over his body. In total, he served 22 years in prison. And before I arrived, he had already spent 31 days in this cell ‘in the basement’. He immediately warned me that he had tuberculosis, but it was a latent form. I was amazed by his attitude towards me: he saw that I was all beaten up, and there was only one mattress and one bunk in the cell – and this prisoner gave me his mattress and helped me lie down, because I could no longer do it myself. These are the miracles of life…Our one prisoner turned out to be more humane than all the Russian brutes”.
According to Oleh, when he was in a cell with Kartyna, there was also a convict in the next cell, whose nickname was Hitler, because he had a tattoo with Hitler’s portrait on his chest. These convicts were no longer beaten, they even began to feed them more. As it turned out later, the occupiers did this to make the prisoners look better because Russian so-called journalists were supposed to come to shoot another ‘true’ video. And these two convicts were supposed to appear on camera as ‘SBU officers’ who were allegedly detained by ‘brave FSB officers’ while trying to prepare a terrorist act against the ‘liberators’.
“I don’t understand why they would show such a ridiculous lie – that our SBU officers have tattoos all over their bodies, like Kartyna and even a portrait of Hitler,” Oleh says with a smile.
The man says that the Russians beat him mainly in the kidneys and legs. They did not hit him in the face so that the consequences were not visible.
“I learned about their system. Every day at six in the evening, they went ‘hunting’ and returned late at night with new captives. They brought, as they themselves said, mainly alleged fire adjusters. By the way, I was also taken as an adjuster, and not a simple one, but a group leader,” says Oleh. “And when they found the Ukrainian flag and the flag of the UKROP party during the search of my apartment, they tried to ‘explain’ to me that the state of Ukraine no longer exists.”
As Oleh says, the torture continued. He was taken to the basement for interrogation only blindfolded. There, they electrocuted him, tying his hands with wet rags and attaching electrodes to them.
“Once I said I had a bad heart and that it would be better if they just shot me. But they electrocuted again. However, only twice. Once they hit me in the face so hard that they knocked out my tooth. So, as I found out later, they invented another form of torture for me…” Oleh recalls.
According to the man, during the interrogation, they made him kneel down and asked if he knew ATO veterans and SBU officers to whom he had passed information about the Russian troops. And every question was accompanied by strong blows to the body, including very painful blows to the kidneys.
“And then they took me out into the yard… I heard a click of the shutter and the loading of the weapon. They shot near my right ear, then near my left ear… And then they put the barrel to the back of my head and said that this bullet would definitely be mine… However, I wasn’t too worried, to be honest…” Oleh says thoughtfully.
The next day, Oleh says, they brought a man from the village of Kozatske. He was taken for interrogation, and Oleh heard a transformer buzzing. This meant that the prisoner was being electrocuted.
“At first, that man screamed terribly from pain, and then everything was quiet. We could only hear the occupiers’ fussing. And then one of them shouted: “Take him away quickly!” I think he was tortured to death. Because all the prisoners were returned to their cells after interrogation, but he was not, and we never heard anything about him again…” Oleh shares his memories.
Also, the occupiers began making Oleh record a video message, but the brave man refused. And the braver the words of refusal sounded, the harder they beat him. And soon a third prisoner was put in the cell with them. He was a rather young guy who was ‘broken’ by interrogations.
“They took him with them to raids, and then, when they threw him to us, he shouted: “You promised to let me go!” They answered him: “Well, if you turn in a couple more people, we’ll let you go,” says Oleh.
Oleh recalls with pain the living conditions in which the occupiers kept prisoners in the torture chamber. According to him, the first two days he was not given food at all. Then they gave him a bottle of water and a can of sardines for the whole day. He was taken outside to the restroom only once every two days. On one of the days, they brought pasta with a pinch of fried carrots, and for dinner they gave him cheap cookies.
“Later we found out that the occupiers had captured 4 paratroopers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And they needed cells to keep them. That’s why we were ‘re-sorted’, Oleh continues. “My neighbor Kartyna managed to tell me his real name, because he was sure that I would be released as I had not confessed to anything.” This man turned out to be a decent person. And he helped me a lot by sharing his prison experience about how to adapt to life in a cell.”
As Oleh recalls, when they heard explosions and realized that the Ukrainian army was shelling Kakhovka, they prayed that at least one shell would hit their torture chamber.
On the sixth day of imprisonment, the man was taken out blindfolded and ordered “to be shot”. Again and again, the Russian executioners reloaded their guns and laughed. And Oleh stood at the shooting wall for 3 hours under their guard.
“And then one of their chiefs came out and said that I was being ‘pardoned’ and released, but I shouldn’t leave Beryslav and had to go to them every day and report. And he also promised that I would be paid 10,000 rubles for each pro-Ukrainian leader whom I turn in,” Oleh recalls.
A new birth and a different life
According to Oleh, he had no idea where he was being taken in the car, blindfolded before that. They threw him out of the car and told him to walk home along the road, which had to be reached through the village and fields.
“I knew that the road was mined and they would fire at me without warning. They drove away and I was left alone. The stars and the moon appeared in the sky. I got my bearings and decided to move through the vineyards and the woods, but they were also mined… I stood and didn’t know what to do…” Oleh recalls those moments of his release. “And then I saw a raccoon dog for the first time. I knew that such predators live in our steppes, but I had never met them before. The predator did not attack me, it simply walked ahead, and seemed to guide me through mined vineyards and tripwires. Our journey together lasted more than an hour.”
The predator took Oleg through the minefields to the outskirts of Beryslav, it was close to midnight. Now he had to go through the whole city unnoticed and get home. The man walked through the yards, knowing every nook and cranny in his native Beryslav. And when he got home, he saw that the door to his apartment was open, everything was looted and smashed…
The next morning, a friend offered Oleh to take him across the Antonivskyi Bridge.
“They hid me in the back of the truck behind boxes of grapes and covered me with old clothes. That’s how we got to Melitopol, where we got into a car, taking a woman and a child with us,” Oleh recalls. “At the checkpoint, a Caucasian shouted at me: “Do you want to go to Ukraine? Why?” And a little further on, we were stopped by soldiers from the “DPR”… Choking from hatred, one of them shouted: “You bastards! Do you think you are there for long? We’ll be in Zaporizhzhia in a week!” And at the same time, he pointed his gun at us, and we had nowhere to run… The child in our car got scared, started crying… But the Russians themselves couldn’t stand the screaming of that idiot and took him away. Eventually, we drove to a crossing point and there we had to wait for 6 nights and 7 days until we finally managed to get to the free territory. My neighbors later told me that the day after I left, the occupiers came to my house again – they were looking for me.”
In Zaporizhzhia, Oleh immediately went to the SBU and told them everything that had happened to him. According to him, it was a pleasant conversation with smart, clever and intelligent people. Later, he moved to Kyiv, where he lived with his sister for half a year and was treated – the damaged kidneys had to be restored.
And then he moved to Odesa, where he began to work again with native rural communities of the Beryslav district, to help with recovery plans for the future of Ukraine.
“But this captivity… This basement… These simulated executions near the wall… These guns pointed at me… It turns out that you can live with this. When you have something to live for. This is the story,” Oleh says thoughtfully.
The story of Oleh Diadiun, which he told us, is just one example of the courage and resilience of Ukrainians. Those who fight for their freedom. It is the story of how one man can stand up to a system that seeks to destroy his identity and will. This is a reminder that the true strength of the Ukrainian people lies in their indomitable spirit and willingness to fight for truth and justice. Ukrainians show the world that even under the greatest pressure, they do not back down and do not give up. This is the heroism of ordinary people who demonstrate the birth of a nation. By telling the truth about the crimes of the occupiers and supporting those on the front lines, we must bring the whole truth to the International Court of Justice. The world must hear the truth about the crimes of the Russian authorities and their entire state. And the evidence and testimony about all crimes must be sent to the court along with the criminals.
Author: Halyna Bakhmatova, journalist from Kherson
Carried out as part of the project supported by the US Embassy in Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily coincide with the official position of the U.S. government.