Officially gone missing, in reality a Russian prisoner: The story of a 19-year-old marine who defended Mariupol

On his 18th birthday, Mykyta went to the military registration and enlistment office. He felt thrilled as he clutched the stack of documents he had brought with him. Just a week later, he packed his things and joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

In the army, he quickly became known as Zhyvchyk – a lively one – because he was always smiling and encouraging everyone around him.

In a few months, at the end of 2021, he signed a contract with the Marine Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The young soldier celebrated New Year 2022 in the trenches. On the frontline, he saw and heard explosions for the first time instead of the fireworks. In response to Russia’s full-scale invasion his unit was deployed in Mariupol.

In the end of April, Zhyvchyk’s unit was not able to break through to reunite with the 36th Marine Brigade as they withdrew from the Illich plant.

The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine labelled Zhyvchyk and his fellow soldiers missing. However, his mother recognised him in a video of a group of prisoners shown on the Russian Union TV channel. Russian reporters filmed a group of Ukrainian soldiers being led to a number of cars. Mykyta’s mom was overwhelmed with despair, joy and helplessness: What was she to do? Whom should she report this to? How can she bring her son back?

Mykyta’s mom, comrades and the civilians he saved in the course of his service tell his story here, the story of one of the youngest soldiers in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 

"He is always smiling, that’s why he became known as Zhyvchyk" 

Mykyta Tatiana was an ordinary boy, a daredevil from Zaporizhzhia. He was a member of a military and patriotic club.

"He was a bit chubby as a kid. To shed those extra pounds he practised judo, hand-to-hand fighting, basketball, boxing, and sambo – he would always win. His coaches said that he had a great physical makeup. But he didn’t quite take to any of it," Mykyta’s mom, Larysa – or Lora, said.

At school he was said to be a capable, but "unbelievably lazy" pupil.

He entered vocational school to become a navy welder, but abandoned his studies due to a conflict with one of his teachers. That was when Mykyta decided to join the army.

He chose an airborne assault course in Mykolaiv. He found tactical medicine classes the most interesting. He asked lots of questions and always wanted to know more about saving people’s lives.

This year, Mykyta wished his mom a happy birthday from the trenches. It was late January and his platoon was stationed at the frontline in Shyroke, in Donetsk Oblast. Still, the boy managed to surprise his mother with a bouquet of roses.

Her voice fills with particular warmth when she recounts this episode:

"He called me and he said: ‘Mom, don’t go to bed yet’. A bit later, the doorbell rang, there was a courier with a package at my door. I got scared, my son is in the military, what if it was a subversive act…But there was a courier with a bouquet of roses in his arms and a note that read ‘To my dear mom on her birthday’.

And he also greeted me in a video call. He showed me the trenches and then introduced me to Lora, his machine gun. He named it in my honour, so that it doesn’t let him down and so that he’d enjoy looking after it."

Mykyta’s mom speaks of him with great affection, though she did mention a few spats, too. Everyone has those, though Lora said that a few years ago Mykyta began putting an end to all conflicts and domestic quarrels with a smile and a kind word.

"He’s got lots of charisma and he’s very kind. He’s got a disarming smile. He is always smiling, always telling stories. That’s how he became known as Zhyvchyk," Lora said.

"Four long days later, I was told he was captured"

When Mykyta was transferred to Mariupol, he asked his mom to get her foreign passport and leave the country as soon as there was any threat – or at the very least, to leave the south for western Ukraine.

Later on, when his unit was encircled, he said: "Mom, I saw so much in Mariupol. I really want you guys to live. The news doesn't even show 10% of all the horror. The trap might slam shut at any moment, you won’t even realise it’s happening. Don’t worry about me: I knew where I was going."

Lora cried and screamed, but was no longer able to do anything.

Mykyta would call home once every four or five days, because there was only one spot in the entire city where he could get mobile phone service – and he had to run for several blocks to get there.

"I knew he was risking his life when he’d run to call me, but my heart – a mother’s heart – would still want to hear from him more often," Lora said.

The last time she heard her son’s voice she knew something evil was afoot. He asked his mom how she was doing and immediately told her he loved her a lot.

"I got tense and asked him what happened. He said: ‘Nothing, I just love you a lot, you can’t even imagine how much’.

Mykyta continued: ‘I know that I’m needed here. I don’t regret anything because I consciously chose this path. I’m only asking for one thing: that you live and take care of my sister. That you both live! I’m only here because of you, to make sure there is no war in our country. I don’t know how much I’ve done but I did as much as I could’," Mykyta’s mom recounted her son’s words.

That time, Lora begged Mykyta to promise her he would come back. But he said he couldn’t because it was "f***ed up" where he was.

One of the reasons Mykyta decided to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine was his desire to help his family financially. His father died two years ago after lengthy and expensive treatment.

"I said I didn’t need that money, that the most important thing was that he lived. My son replied that that’s out of his hands. And then I heard blasts, and the connection cut off," the woman said.

A week of silence ensued. Then Lora received a WhatsApp message from a number she didn’t recognise: "Dear mommy, I’m alive and well. Your eagle, Zhyvchyk."

Two photographs were enclosed. She replied that he also loved him. She saw that the message was read, but she got no reply.

Lora had a habit of deleting all the messages due to safety concerns, but she saved this unknown number.

"In a week, I sent a message to that number asking to let me know if there was any information about my son. Four long days later, I was told he was captured," Lora said.

In the days that followed, she began searching for confirmation of Mykyta’s capture. She couldn’t sleep, her eyes turned red and hurt because she hardly looked away from the screen of her computer. She saw a young man who looked like her son in one of the videos in which Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol were surrendering to Russian forces.

Around the same time, people who had promised Mykyta that they would get in touch with his mom when they left the hell of Mariupol began to reach out.

"You can’t do anything bad to yourself"

Ksenia męt Zhyvchyk on a day when one of Mariupol’s residential neighbourhoods was shelled. Ksenia’s relatives had been killed or suffered injuries in the shelling.

The young soldier helped the woman find the strength to live through that time. When she was able to escape for the Ukrainian-controlled territories, she started searching for the young soldier on social media. A few days after Ksenia shared her story in a social media post, Mykyta’s mom reached out to her to tell her Mykyta was captured.

On 12 March, the day when Kykyta and Ksenia met, Russian forces were firing on Mariupol’s residential neighbourhoods with Grads [multiple rocket launchers - ed.]. Ksenia and her relatives were hiding in their apartment when a Russian shell hit their building. Her 16-year-old son and her sister’s husband died on the spot.

Meanwhile, Ksenia, her mother and her sister sustained injuries.

"They were losing critical amounts of blood, I had a relatively minor injury and a contusion," Ksenia said.

When the shelling quieted down, Ksenia’s neighbour stopped by her flat wanting to know if everything was alright. His car had miraculously not been affected by the blasts, so he took everyone who survived to a children’s hospital. It was the only Ukrainian-controlled hospital still working.

"When we’d just arrived there, the belt we used to stop the bleeding from my mom’s leg was already slack. A soldier approached us (it was Mykyta) and used a carabiner to tighten the tourniquet we’d improvised using a belt. He saved my mom’s life by doing that," Ksenia recounted.

All of Ksenia’s relatives were immediately taken to get urgent surgeries. Meanwhile, she was left to her own devices as she waited for her own turn. There were too many patients in the hospital that day.

"I was in shock. I wanted to kill myself, because half of my family was killed right before my eyes and I didn’t know if the ones who remained would survive, either.

But before doing it [i.e., killing herself - ed.] I really wanted to have a cigarette. I didn’t have one, there was a great deficit. I saw a soldier in the hospital’s hallway – it was Mykyta. He was holding these boxes that contained all this stuff for the kids: books, pencils, colouring books. I approached him and asked him for a cigarette," Ksenia recalled.

He agreed, then finished handing out his gifts to the kids and said: "Let’s go."

The doors at the hospital’s main entrance were heavy; they were made of iron. It was forbidden to open them due to the constant shelling which hadn’t stopped since the beginning of March. Ksenia and Zhyvchyk propped the doors open ever so slightly.

"We started to smoke. Mykyta was behaving so oddly: he’d stand just by my side, then would get really close to me. I didn’t understand what he was doing straightaway.

He was protecting me with his own body because he was wearing body armour and I wasn’t," Ksenia recalled.

In between drags of his cigarette, he asked what happened to Ksenia, and she told him briefly.

"Mykyta looked very carefully at me and said: ‘Look how many people have sustained injuries and wounds; people need help. You can’t do anything bad to yourself’. I hadn’t even told him about what I wanted to do, he must have just seen it in me.

And I would have probably ignored all of this ‘advice’ if he didn’t remind me so much of my son. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me gently and said: ‘You’re needed here. Let’s go help’," Ksenia’s voice filled with gratitude as she recounted this.

She went to talk to the doctors, asked them how her relatives were doing, whether any help was needed. She was told that there was a critical shortage of staff at the hospital: some of the nurses and sanitary workers didn’t come to work or left at the end of their shifts and didn’t come back. No one knew if they were even alive, or whether they were still in Mariupol. Ksenia stayed for four days: she mopped the hospital floors and dressed patients’ wounds.

Two soldiers would spend each night in the hospital to guard civilians.

"I was too afraid to sleep in the ward so I asked Mykyta to put my mattress in the corridor, where there were no windows. A shelling at night is not just loud – it’s a real explosion of lights and sounds. He’d come up to me and ask me how I was doing several times [in that first night - ed.], but in the morning new soldiers replaced him.

I’ve only seen him once more when he brought in bottles of saline solution that were left at their place of deployment. Mykyta ran by, I didn’t even have a chance to talk to him again," Ksenia added.

"He’d only really get upset when we had 200s"

Marik [name was changed for anonymity - ed.] – a doctor who has operated on the wounded in Mariupol, rescuing their lives – met Mykyta in the hospital where he worked.

"He was among the soldiers who stood guard over the hospital in Mariupol, which was already under fire. When the Russian aircraft conducted an airstrike on the maternity hospital, Mykyta was the first one to get there to help the injured.

In the hospital, he would help with transporting and moving the wounded, taking on all sorts of other heavy duties. He helped move the 300s [military code for wounded soldiers - ed.] to the basement during shelling, to pile up sandbags in the windows, that sort of thing," Marik said.

During a rare break between the arrival of more wounded people, Marik and Mykyta would smoke together and talk about their lives. Mykyta asked lots of questions about giving aid to the wounded, about different illnesses and conditions. He said that he was so interested in all these medical issues that he’d like to become a doctor after the war.

"His mood wouldn’t sour – neither during artillery shelling nor during airstrikes, he would always smile and joke around. He’d only really get upset when we had 200s [military code for soldiers who were killed - ed.]. He’d always ask what more could have been done to improve their survival chances," the doctor recalled.

Marik last spoke to Zhyvchyk the day after the Russians bombed the Mariupol military hospital.

Mykyta said that doctors should evacuate from the hospital because they are civilians, meaning they had a chance [to come out alive - ed.]. When he was asked what he would do, Mykyta said: "I am a soldier, I will stand until the very end."

Zhyvchyk gave Marik his mother’s phone number.

"He asked me to call her and tell her that he was brave, that he wasn’t afraid, that he loved her as soon as I got out. I got out a month later.

I called her on that very day. I found out from her that she recognised him in the propagandists’ footage, though she wasn’t sure it had really been him. I was certain I recognised him and confirmed her intuition," the doctor noted bitterly.

Marik added that Mykyta’s mom managed to find out – via acquaintances in the occupied territories – that the conditions of imprisonment were horrific. Up to 20 people were being held in two-person cells. They were only fed once a day. They were given very little water and never let outside. The prisoners’ health suffered, and the conditions they were kept in were extremely unsanitary.

"I thank you for the way you brought up your son"

A territorial defence soldier who was responsible for the security of Mariupol’s central hospital got in touch with Lora.

"Good afternoon. I wanted to express my sincere gratitude for the way you brought up your son Mykyta. It was my honour to serve with him at Hospital No.3 in Mariupol […]

I am sincerely grateful to God for the honour of meeting him. He was so worried about you, worried that he had no way to communicate with you, to tell you he was alright and how much he loved you. Once again, I thank you for the way you brought up your son," he wrote.

In a private conversation with Lora, this soldier said that when they were given daily rations, Mykyta would always give up his can of tinned stewed meat in favour of someone else.

This man tried to explain to Mykyta that people could be greedy, that they might have enough to eat already, while Mykyta would go hungry – but Mykyta was unwavering.

One day something Mykyta said moved the fellow soldier: "Maybe she has 10 hungry mouths to feed at home. I’ll find something else."

"This is what my son is like: he’d take his last shirt off of him to give it to someone in need. From his comrade’s words I gather that that was what happened to his military first-aid kits also: he gave everything away whenever someone needed it," Lora said.

But she was most moved by the way Mykyta’s comrade thanked her for his upbringing. 

"Above all things, I’m a mother. So I was proud of my son, when he was cast in a movie. Proud when he took the silver medal in our oblast’s sambo competition. And I was very proud when all the children would spend every summer lolling about while Mykyta worked since the age of 13.

Now I’m learning about another side of my son. The things that his fellow soldiers tell me…I can hardly believe that my son is capable of that. And I’m even more proud of him! Turns out I hardly knew him at all," Mykyta’s mother said.