Lena was released after two weeks of captivity. But the psychological scars of what she experienced in a Russian military institution remained. “We kept hearing screams, we knew the men (in our unit) were being tortured,” she says.
“They beat us mercilessly, with fists, sticks, hammers, with anything they could get their hands on,” Andrey says. “In the cold, they took off our clothes and made us crawl on the asphalt. Our legs were torn, we were terrified and freezing.”
“The food was terrible – sauerkraut and spoiled fish heads. It’s just a nightmare,” says the Marine. “It’s like waking up from a bad dream in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, terrified.”
Andrei’s imprisonment lasted much longer than his wife’s – two and a half years.
After leaving the prisoner exchange three months ago, Andrei met his two-year-old son Leon for the first time. When the couple was captured by Russian troops, Lena didn’t know what to expect.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I just cried, first of all from happiness and then from sadness, because I couldn’t tell my husband.”
