The Hero of Ukraine, Yuliia Paievska

"The Russians told me it was best to commit suicide because they would kill me anyway, but I tried to believe I would survive."

"I had absolutely no information about what was happening in the world. I didn't even know if my family was alive or if our house had survived because the Russians were almost already in Kyiv when we left."

"They said that no one supports us, that other countries only give us old, rusty weapons."

"They said that no one needed us and that everyone had long forgotten about Ukraine."

Yuliia Paievska, Team Ukraine Invictus Games competitor, volunteer paramedic

This undated image provided by the Invictus Games Team Ukraine shows Yuliia Paievska, known as Taira, a celebrated Ukrainian medic who used a body camera to record her work in Mariupol while the port city was under Russian siege.  Invictus Games Team Ukraine / AP

 

Before she was captured by Russian forces three months ago, Yuliia Paievska was serving as a volunteer paramedic on the Mariupol front line. Before the February 24 invasion she had been training to compete at the Invictus Games in swimming, archery and power-lifting. After she was incarcerated by the Russian military, her 19-year-old daughter, Anna-Sofia Puzanova took her mother's place in the archery competition, where she won a bronze medal.

Yuliia Paievska began her paramedic career on the Donbas front line in 2014. She had recently retrained as a medic for the specific purpose of helping in the Donbas.She became famous for helping injured servicemen, having reportedly saved an estimated 500 Ukrainian soldiers in the Donbas. 

 

Her greatest accomplishment was training 8,000 people in the practise of tactical medicine where treatment was given to wounded separatists and Russians as well as Ukrainian military. The nation's highest civilian honour became hers in recognition of her dedication and sacrifice for her country.

 

Paievska watches as emergency personnel work on a patient on March 2 in Mariupol. (Yuliia Paievska/The Associated Press)

 

During one evacuation operation she was injured and ended up having titanium hip replacements which left her in chronic pain. She was ambushed on March 18 when she and a colleague drove an ambulance through a humanitarian corridor. She described being placed into solitary confinement where medication for her thyroid and asthma was withheld. During that time she was permitted a half-glass of water daily.

She was eventually moved to a ten-foot by twenty-foot cell which held over twenty women. There, the 53-year-old underwent "beatings and torture with electricity". For that three-month period, she was tortured and given to believe that not only had Ukraine ceased its existence, but she would be killed, as well.

"Ab crunches, yoga and meditation. I tried to keep fit in jail. I think if  you can convince yourself to survive, you will."

"I had no reason to think that I would get out, because they were determined to shoot me, kill me."

"But for some reason I knew, I believed that I would survive."

Yuliia Paievska, recipient of Hero of Ukraine medal

Smoke and flame rise after a strike on a chemical plant in Severodonetsk, Donbas region. The city has been under siege by Russian forces and hundreds are sheltering in the plant. (Oleksandr Ratushniak/Reuters)