Julia Pajevska, a Ukrainian who worked as a paramedic in Donbas, became a Russian prisoner of war. After this, the Russian media made him a Nazi and a spy.
In his home country Paramedic in Ukraine Julia Pajevska considered a hero.
Pajevska’s first aid team is called Taira’s angels, after Pajevska’s nickname. According to the Ukrainian media, they have saved hundreds of people.
In Russia, Pajevska was unknown until she was captured in the spring of 2022. In the Russian media, she was not a paramedic, but a murderer, a Nazi and a spy.
When Pajevska was able to return to her home country in a prisoner exchange after three months in prison, the Russian state media was convinced that there had to be something shady in the chain of events.
Pajevska was born in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, in 1968. He has said that he already learned to change bandages and apply tourniquets at school.
In 2014, Pajevska became a paramedic in the popular uprising known as Euromaidan. Pajevska’s Facebook account has from that time publicationsin which he appears in the clothes of a volunteer paramedic.
When the war started in eastern Ukraine, Pajevska, at the request of an acquaintance, completed tactical first aid training, which teaches medical skills needed on the battlefield. Then he went to Donbas as a paramedic.
In the years 2018–2020, Pajevska served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and headed the evacuation department of the 61st Field Hospital in Mariupol. After this, he was repatriated, but he continued as a volunteer.
Pajevska’s man Vadim Puzanov has said that after Russia attacked in February 2022, the Taira Angels’ base was located in the village of Berdjanske, east of Mariupol. The place was close to the ceasefire line between the parties to the Donbass conflict.
On March 16, Ukrainian sources reported that Pajevska had been captured.
Ukrainian the media noticed Pajevska already in 2014.
Published in October 2014 by the Ukrainian channel Hromadske With a YouTube video Pajevska tells the soldiers how to give first aid in combat conditions. In the video, he is introduced as a volunteer worker.
In the one published in 2016 in the article Pajevska is introduced as a volunteer medical nurse helping soldiers in the Donbas war zone. In 2018, the Ukrainskaja Pravda magazine calls Julia’s group Taira’s angels.
Meduza found no significant mentions of Pajevska in the Russian media before her imprisonment. Despite this, Russia’s pro-government media were immediately convinced that Pajevska was a criminal with pro-Nazi views.
The first times he was noticed prominently in the Russian media probably only on March 27 NTV in the program by name The Woman Called The Beast. At that time, Pajevska had already been imprisoned.
In the program, Pajevska is alleged to be a well-known Ukrainian neo-Nazi henchman and an experienced spy. According to NTV reporters, Pajevska’s job as a paramedic was just a cover role for intelligence work.
In the program, Pajevska is compared to a Nazi leader to Adolf Hitler and called the adviser to the President of Ukraine It would be Arestovichin as an informal assistant.
In addition, Pajevska is alleged to have possibly been involved in an operation in which the organs of dead and wounded soldiers on the front would be secretly sold to European clinics.
of NTV the program has many shots of Pajevska in captivity.
In the program, the conversation with Pajevska is presented as a revelation, despite the fact that most of the statements accusing her are heard from outside the picture and not from the conversation with Pajevska.
One of the few moments that can be interpreted as a confession is at the end of the program, when one of Pajevska’s interlocutors calls her a fighter because she allegedly passed intelligence information to the fighters.
However, the discussion contains at least one clear cut, and there may be more cuts. At one point in the video, the image size changes and the soundtrack contains several uneven transitions.
However, the transitions can also be explained by the fact that the voice of Julia’s interlocutor has been made unrecognizable.
Russian media created image of Pajevska as a criminal is largely based on descriptions of her imprisonment.
The NTV program says that Pajevska was arrested when she tried to escape from Mariupol wearing someone else’s clothes. In addition, the program claims that he hid behind two children whose parents had been killed. The program also hints that Pajevska could have something to do with the deaths of the children’s parents.
At the end of May, other pro-government Russian media also began to claim that Pajevska had killed the parents of these two children from Mariupol.
“The children who were with him told [auton pysäyttäneille venäläismielisille sotilaille], that this Nazi shot their parents and threatened to kill them. Now Pajevska awaits her harsh sentence”, stated Pravda.ru website.
Same news published by again editor of Life and Komsomolskaya Pravda Dmitry Steshin.
Pajevska herself says in the NTV program that the children she took with her were a half-year-old baby and her 2.5-year-old sister. The presenters of the program do not dispute this. However, the children’s ages are not mentioned in the publications, where the children in question allegedly testified to pro-Russian soldiers that Pajevska murdered their parents.
Pajevska statements show that he tried to transport two orphaned children and other women with their children from Mariupol to Zaporizhia. After that, according to his own words, he planned to return to the city.
Vadim Puzanov has told the media that Pajevska left Mariupol along the evacuation corridor opened by Russian soldiers. He did not hide behind the children, but tried to escort them out of town.
“I don’t think it’s even worth the effort to explain how outrageous propaganda and lies these stories are. Why was he dressed in civilian clothes? He’s a civilian, so of course he was dressed in civilian clothes. Why was he dressed in someone else’s clothes? This is another way of spreading propaganda”, Puzanov told in April for Radio Svoboda.
June On the evening of the 17th, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi announced, that Julia Pajevska had made it home. The next day, Pajevska’s video message was published.
“Everyone who is now on the other side knows that everything will work out and everyone will get home, just like me. Thank you,” he says on video.
On June 20, Pajevska wrote On Facebook, that he lost 50 kilos in prison and that the conditions there resembled a concentration camp.
Russian the pro-government media had no certainty for a moment about Pajevska’s release.
War correspondent for the Pervyi kanal television channel Irina Kusenkova published writings on June 18 in which he claimed that “Taira has not been replaced.”
Deputy Information Minister of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” or DNR Daniil Bezsonov however, confirmed Pajevska’s transfer and assured that he was replaced with “our notable men”.
Kusenkova soon too admitted, that paramedic Pajevska had reached Ukraine. However, according to him, it was not a prisoner exchange, but some kind of shady procedure related to the exchange of high-ranking Chechens arrested in Ukraine.
Kusenkova also considered corruption possible and said that there would be “significant skirmishes” in the Donetsk People’s Republic because “Taira has been illegally transferred to Ukraine.”
On June 20, the President of the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation Ramzan Kadyrov strongly denied Kusenkova’s claims about the exchange of Chechens. Kadyrov called the information of the “dishonest” Russian journalist completely false and hinted that such comments could lead to criminal charges for spreading false information about the Russian army.
Komsomolskaya Pravda reporter Stešin, on the other hand, wonders why it was necessary to claim that Pajevska had been accused of murdering the parents of two small children in the first place – even though just a few weeks earlier Stešin himself had participated in spreading these allegations.
Ukrainian the authorities have not said who or who were handed over to Russia or pro-Russian separatists in order to free Julia Pajevska.
Published in Meduza on June 21, 2022.
In HS, the Finnish version has been condensed and edited. Editor: Elina Saarilahti
The original story can be read here.
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