The tragic story of Mykola Horobchenko's captivity

On March 25, 2022, I received a video from Kadyrovites that my husband Mykola Horobchenko had been taken as prisoner. In the video, he was handcuffed with the conscript Dmytro Litvinov. My husband was stripped to the waist. The recording shows traces of beatings and torture on my husband's face. He was forced to speak a learned text:

"Guys, you need to give up. Akhmat is power! Don't even think about doing something like we did. We wanted to surrender, but we were not allowed to", – Mykola Horobchenko says in the video.

"Who didn't let you surrender?" – the unknown voiceover asks.

"Our commanders did not allow us to surrender", – Mykola Horobchenko replies.

"What is your unit?" – the unknown voice asks again.

"Military Unit 3057. Our commander Moskalenko, the captain, was killed. He's gone. There is no 2nd company anymore. Everyone ran away", – Mykola Horobchenko continues.

"So you advise everyone to surrender, right?" – the unknown voiceover persistently asks.

"Of course, to surrender and live in peace", – Mykola Horobchenko continues.

"You have realized that Akhmat is power, right?" – the unknown voiceover interrupts again.

"Yes, we have realized", – Mykola Horobchenko replies together with Dmytro Litvinov.

"How does Somali work?" – the unknown man asks.

"He just comes, gives instructions, and leaves", – Mykola Horobchenko answers.

I was in shock for a few days and then called the military unit. I sent them the video and they put my husband on the list of prisoners of war.

Around November 10-12, I received a call from Kyiv and was told that there was a body that matched Mykola Horobchenko's description and DNA. I arrived in Kyiv on November 13 or 14 and immediately went to the prosecutor's office. At first, there was an interrogation, and then there was an identification.

On November 17, we were at the identification. It was just a shock. I had to go up to the carriage where there were packages with the dead people. We found the number, opened the package. It was my husband. I identified him by his tattoos. His body was almost completely eaten by worms. He was just like in the video – without any outerwear.

I went to the prosecutor's office and wrote a statement that I wanted an autopsy. The autopsy was conducted. According to the results, my husband was shot.

The examination lasted from November 28 to February 23, 2023. "M. O. Horobchenko's death was caused by a penetrating gunshot wound to the left pleural cavity with damage to the left lung, soft tissue and seventh rib on the left with internal and external bleeding. Moreover, the experts found a complete tear of the joint capsule of the hyoid bone on the right side. According to the experts' conclusions, the hyoid bone was broken intravitally with a blunt object".

From the moment they sent me the video, I received photos of the killed guys for about a month. They told me to gather everyone whose men were held captive in Mariupol, go to Bankova Street and hold rallies demanding the end to the war, so that our men would surrender. Of course, I did not do this.

"Ask Ukraine to surrender; are you going to take your husband out of captivity; how is your husband doing; greetings from your husband; your husband has lost weight, he will gain weight with Russian food. It's a pity you won't see him anymore; Kolia was found, in captivity, killing Russians in Mariupol. All of Donbass to you!"; "Hi, don't wait for Kolia, he is done!"; "Did you recognize Kolia? He said you are his wife. I am a Chechen, he is in our captivity. Today he is to be executed", – these were the messages that were sent after the video of Mykola Horobchenko's torture was made public.

It happened in the summer. I received a call on Viber. An unknown man spoke to me in Ukrainian. They asked me to pay 100 thousand UAH. And Mykola spoke Russian. I wrote a message that I wanted a photo and video of today, that he was alive. And then we would communicate more.

The last time I saw Mykola was on March 9. We were in the Marine cultural center in the port with the child. There was no communication. He called my sister in Odesa. She told him where Ania and I were. After that, he arrived. It was on March 9. It was morning. Mykola came with a driver in a car, brought us field rations. He said he knew we were hungry. We both cried with him. He stayed just a few minutes, and said: "You can't imagine what is happening in the city – just burn all the documents". The fact is that I am a former servicewoman. I was discharged before the war for health reasons.

Mykola did not smoke, did not drink, and went in for sports. Dmytro Litvinov, a conscript, was with him in the video. He was friends with the conscripts, they addressed him, he gave them the phone to call. He brought home their fleece jackets. I did laundry for everyone. On the first day of the war, when he begged me to leave, it was the evacuation of families of soldiers, I refused. For the entire Ukraine, the war began in February 2022. But we served, Kolia since 2015, and I since 2018, and we were always in the hot spots, we thought, like everyone else, that they would not go deeper in the country and it would all end quickly. The guys were motivated, no one wanted to leave. He asked me to burn all the documents or bury them so that no one would know that I was a combatant, so that I could leave with my child in peace.

I took all the documents out. On March 16, when the drama theater was bombed, my friends, doctors from Vodnykiv Hospital, came and said they had a place for me. But without our belongings and without anything. We ran home, packed all our documents and laptop into a backpack. We deleted everything from our phones. I had a lot of videos that showed what was happening in Mariupol in the first days of the war, how Russian tanks were hitting apartment buildings. But before we left, we deleted everything. We passed 18 checkpoints before we got to Zaporizhzhia. It was a miracle we survived. I think it was not in vain, because we have to talk about it, how it all happened.

We had no communication since March 1. We were living in the basement from February 26 to March 16, 2022.