“He had made wedding rings out of aluminum foil and asked me to marry him. Of course, I said yes,” recalled Valeria Subotina.
“She was the love of my life. Our rings were just perfect,” she said.
Valeria and her partner, Andriy Subotin, 34, a captain in the Ukrainian army, planned to get married in Mariupol, southern Ukraine, before the war.
They dreamed of having a big party with friends and family.
But just after the full-scale invasion began, the Russian army rushed to that strategic port city and surrounded it in a matter of days.
It was early March 2022.
Mariupol was subject to constant Russian bombing, the streets were on fire, there was no food, electricity, water or a single exit.
The siege lasted almost three months. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed.
Many residents of Mariupol desperately sought shelter in the Azovstal steel plant, where there were more than 30 air raid shelters.
They had been built in the Soviet era as protection against a much-feared potential nuclear war.
That was where Valeria was married and widowed, in just two days.
“On the brink of famine”
Valeria was a poet when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.
Shortly after, she became the press officer for the Azov Brigade, a part of the Ukrainian National Guard that sparked controversy for its alleged association with far-right groups, a claim Azov himself denies.
As the Russian offensive on Mariupol intensified, Ukrainian troops had to retreat to the bunkers at the Azovstal plant, along with civilians.
The entrance to the bunkers was like a hole and you had to go down several partially collapsed stairs, Valeria recalled.
“You moved through passages and tunnels and went deeper and deeper into the ground, until you came to a concrete cube, a kind of safe room,” he said.
In the bunkers, people built improvised kitchens, where they prepared whatever food they could with whatever they found.
If it was flour, they prepared the dough and baked cakes.
“We called it bread, but it was just flour cakes in water. That’s how we survived. It was almost a famine,” Valeria said.
“We were like mice, gathering everything we found. We slept on rags or clothes.
“Some places were completely dark, but your eyes got used to it and you came to think that was normal. Of course, there was nothing normal in our lives back then.”
On April 15, 2022, a large aerial bomb fell on the plant and Valeria was injured.
“They found me among the corpses, the only one who was alive. It was a miracle, but also a terrible tragedy”.
Suffering from a severe concussion, Valeria had to spend eight days in the Azovstal underground hospital, where she was treated among hundreds of soldiers with amputated limbs lying everywhere.
“They couldn’t get proper help because there was very little medicine. The smell of blood and rot was everywhere,” he said.
Valeria’s partner Andriy was also stationed in Azovstal.
Shortly after her injury, he proposed to her right there in the bunkers.
On May 5, 2022, the couple signed the required documents and sent scanned copies to Kyiv for Andriy’s parents, who went to the civil registry to officially end the marriage.
At her ceremony in the bunkers, she wore her military uniform as her wedding dress and the rings were made of aluminum foil.
Andriy promised Valeria that he would buy her a suitable wedding ring once the war was over.
But on May 7, the man died while carrying out a combat mission in the region.
“People talk about the feeling they have when a loved one dies, but I never felt anything like that,” Valeria explained.
“Actually, the day Andriy was killed [antes de recibir la noticia de su muerte] I was in a good mood. She had just married me and I was in love.”
When she found out about her husband’s death, she didn’t cry, but kept it all inside, she said.
“There, in Azovstal, a day was as if it were a year.
“First I was a girlfriend, the next day I was a wife and the next day I became a… I’m afraid to even say the word.”
Prisoners of war
In early May 2022, thousands of Ukrainians who took refuge in the Azovstal steel plant and managed to survive without food and medicine for 80 days needed to be evacuated immediately.
Initially, civilians were allowed to leave the plant. The soldiers were then taken prisoner by the Russian army.
There were hopes they would be released as part of a prisoner exchange deal.
But after more than two years, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, including the nearly 900 members of the Azov Brigade, whom many in Ukraine consider national heroes, remain in Russian hands.
Their families stage regular protests to plead with Ukrainian authorities to do more to exchange them.
The process of exchanging prisoners of war is complicated.
Nearly 3,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been freed by Russia in prisoner exchanges since the invasion began.
More than 10,000 are believed to remain in Russian custody.
A recent United Nations investigation documented that Ukrainian prisoners of war have been subjected to relentless beatings, electric shocks, rape, sexual violence and mock executions.
Valeria was also held captive for 11 months. She went through torture and abuse, she said. She recently published a book about her time in prison.
The body of her late husband, Andriy, remains at the Azovstal steel plant.
“[Los rusos] They killed and destroyed everything I loved: my city, my friends and my husband“, lament.
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