“There is no justice, accept it.” My husband often said this phrase. And now I think he was absolutely right.” Vialietta Shovkova has the face of a little girl who has seen horror. At 23 she fights to see her love alive again, the sergeant of the Azov brigade Oleksiy Bura-Shovkovy who was captured two years ago after the evacuation of the Mariupol steel plant where he and his comrades had barricaded themselves. Last February 22 Oleksiy he was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Russian court that she had no right to judge him: «I am offended by the fact that, for defending his home, Moscow was able to judge him – says the young Ukrainian in perfect English – and does not want him to return to his homeland.” Oleksiy has a benign tumor on the pituitary gland and should undergo a strict medical check-up every three to four months. This is unlikely to happen judging by the images of the soldiers who returned home after months of Russian captivity. No longer men but walking skeletons.
«When I saw my husband in a film broadcast on Russian TV I struggled to recognize him given his condition. His gaze seemed empty, emotionless.” Tamara Koryagina has features hardened by pain. “I’m 23 years old and I have nothing left,” she says in Ukrainian. Her city, Mariupol, has been completely destroyed by Russian forces and her man Serhiv Mykhaylenko, 26, is locked up in the same prison where Aleksei Navalny died, in the IK-3 maximum security prison in Kharp, a town in the far north of Russia that was originally an installation of the infamous Gulag Archipelago. «We have no news, we don’t know how he is, only that they sentenced him to life imprisonment. When he arrived in prison he has been tortured, has broken ribs and suffers from panic attacks. I don’t know what to do, every morning I wake up and think of him.”
Tamara and Vialietta arrived in Rome on Tuesday morning on a flight from Warsaw. With them are Alla Didenko and Tetyana Vyshniak. They have never been to Italy but have no desire to visit. Theirs is a desperate mission. This morning they will meet the Pope and they will ask him to intercede for the liberation of their loved ones. Tetyana shows us the tattoo on her right arm: “A child is a lifetime.” She is waiting for the return of her Artem, a sergeant of the Azov brigade captured three years ago and sentenced to 22 years in prison. «When they captured him he was 21 years old, a few days ago, on June 19, spent his third birthday in captivity, the last time I heard from him was December 6, 2021, he told me: “mum it’s tough but I’ll go home and we’ll celebrate our birthdays together which are close”. Tetyana’s eyes fill with tears, she looks at her traveling companions and says: «Only they can understand me, now I only have them, let’s fight together and cry together».
Alla looks at her with approval. She is 29 years old and dreams of being able to go to Portugal with her boyfriend, Sergeant Oleksiy Zhernovsky, 26 years old, sentenced by the Russians to 28 years in prison: «We would also like to bring our dog Marik but it’s all just a dream, the Russians do not want to exchange prisoners with those who have been convicted. Only the Pope can help us.”
