What Ukrainain soldier looks like after 20 months in Russian captivity
How the military has changed (photo collage: RBC-Ukraine)
In January of this year, a 41-year-old soldier from the 56th Separate Motorized Brigade, Volodymyr Tsemy-Bursov, was successfully returned from Russian captivity. The man, who weighed 95 kilograms before his captivity, only weighed 57 kilograms after spending 20 months as a prisoner of war, despite having a height of 191 centimeters.
RBC-Ukraine provides insights into how the soldier looked before his captivity and his current condition.
The material was written using sources such as the Instagram page of United24 and an interview with Volodymyr conducted by the Svoi.City.
Photo Before and After Captivity - the World Needs to See Them
"This is how Volodymyr Tsemy-Bursov looks after the exchange following 20 months in Russian captivity. We can't even imagine what they did to him and other Ukrainian prisoners of war, but we will definitely fight to bring them all home!" - states a post from United24.
The difference in the photos is indeed hard to ignore. In captivity, the man has significantly lost weight, and he looks nothing like the smiling and happy person in the "before" photo.
A military before and after captivity (Photo: instagram.com/united24.media)
A military before and after captivity (Photo: instagram.com/united24.media)
What the man went through
In a recent interview, the soldier shared his harrowing experience of being captured on April 12, 2022. Before this, he worked as a musician in Mariupol and on cruise liners. In 2020, Tsemy-Bursov joined the orchestra of the 56th Brigade.
At the onset of the full-scale war, the man was on duty and later found himself on the territory of the metallurgical plant named after Ilich. In April, the soldier and his comrades attempted to break through the encirclement but ended up in captivity.
He was held captive in temporarily occupied Luhansk, also he survived the torture in Olenivka. Russian forces physically abused the prisoners. When Volodymyr returned to Ukraine, it took him some time to fully comprehend the situation. Currently, he is recovering from the trauma of captivity.
"Now I am undergoing treatment in one of the medical facilities in Poltava. My health condition is much worse than I expected. I have, as they say, a 'whole bouquet' of illnesses, including chronic gastritis in the exacerbation stage, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) - a disease of the human digestive system, chronic prostatitis in remission, and so on," the soldier shared.
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