‘Value Your Freedom’: Ex-Kherson Mayor Recounts Years in Russian Captivity

After more than three years in Russian captivity, former Kherson mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko has spoken publicly for the first time, The Gaze reports, citing Ukrainian media.

Detained in the spring of 2022 after refusing to collaborate with the occupation authorities, he was lured into a meeting by FSB operatives and arrested. 

For most of his imprisonment, the 65-year-old was held in Penal Colony No. 7 in Pakino, Vladimir region, without legal status as a civilian detainee.

Now, two weeks after his release in a prisoner exchange on Ukraine’s Independence Day, Mykolayenko recalls the years of confinement, the torment endured by younger detainees, and his determination to fight for the freedom of Ukrainians still unlawfully held in Russian prisons.

“It is always good to be free in your native country. Only when we returned to Ukraine and saw people with flags and handwritten banners did I truly believe I was home,” he says quietly, standing outside a hospital fence in Kyiv and watching the flow of city life.

For him, the return home is not an end but the start of a new mission: to speak out for those who remain behind bars, and to ensure their voices are not forgotten.

“Civilians as hostages”

The former mayor said Russian officials routinely tried to force civilian captives to declare themselves soldiers. He described cells that included teachers, volunteers and ordinary residents swept up during “clarification” operations.

“In every cell I saw civilians. This is terrorism, taking as many hostages as possible. It’s easier to seize someone at a market than capture an armed soldier,” he said, citing the case of a Zaporizhzhia resident detained while collecting firewood who has now spent more than three years behind bars.

Mykolayenko described torture and the collapse of fellow prisoners’ mental health. Severely wounded men were left untreated.

“People went insane. They kept prisoners with amputated limbs or severe illnesses locked up without mercy. When exchanges came up, I pleaded: free the sick first,” he recalled.

Ukrainian authorities have verified thousands of civilians held by Russia, with rights groups warning the true number is far higher.

Scenes that still haunt

Ahead of the Independence Day exchange, Mykolayenko met a young Ukrainian prisoner suffering acute psychological trauma.

“If I could choose, I would say: take Dmytro and that boy instead of me… We could save this child. But he stayed there. They are killed there both physically and morally. That is what hurts,” he said.

He also recalled a cellmate – “in love with life,” who died during transport for an exchange. Russian officials blamed a January 2024 Il-76 incident, a claim Mykolayenko says remains unverified.

Kherson’s resistance 

Born and raised in Kherson, Mykolayenko served as mayor from 2014 to 2020 and joined the city’s Territorial Defense in February 2022. He led early mass protests against the occupation and said the scale of civilian resistance visibly unsettled Russian troops.

Mykolayenko recalls the morning of February 24, 2022, when Russian helicopters struck fuel depots in Chornobaivka, outside Kherson. Within hours, volunteers crowded enlistment offices to join the city’s Territorial Defence.

“We were handed rifles and told to resist tanks with almost no support from the Armed Forces. It was impossible to mount effective resistance,” he said.

Despite the imbalance, Kherson residents staged mass street protests. Mykolayenko, who led one of the demonstrations, remembers Russian soldiers visibly unnerved by the defiance.

“They did not expect so many people to come out unarmed. Their faces showed fear,” he said.

But Mykolaenko is blunt about what went wrong in the first days of the invasion: roads he was told would be mined were not; local branches of key security and emergency services left the city before Russian forces entered; and only volunteer Territorial Defense units, short on resources, attempted to block advancing columns.

“Kherson was left without those who should have defended it,” he said. “Among those who truly stood up, I saw only patrol policemen.”

“Either cooperation or the pit”

Reflecting on collaborators such as former Kherson mayor Volodymyr Saldo and deputy Kyrylo Stremousov, Mykolayenko said he was not surprised by their choices.

“Everyone knew they were ‘Moscow’s plants.’ The mistake – by Ukraine and by the West – was believing such evil could be controlled. This war proved it cannot,” he said.

Mykolaenko also said collaborator Kyrylo Stremousov called to offer him a post under the occupation. Refusal, he was warned, meant “the pit,” Russian-run prisons, and threats to his family.

“They told me: recognize the new authorities publicly, or go to a prison you will never leave. If you disagree, your family will suffer.”

Freedom as the highest treasure

After the release, Mykolayenko has a simple message: “For some people freedom is just a phantom… But if your freedom is taken, you will have neither sausage nor bread – nothing. Value your freedom.”

“I still cannot comprehend that I am truly free,” Mykolayenko added. “Freedom is the greatest value. You begin to feel it in the smallest things – in the streets, in the sounds of the city, in people’s faces. But freedom also means responsibility: to speak about the crimes I witnessed and to fight for the release of those still held in Russian prisons.”

So, Mykolayenko plans to campaign for prisoner exchanges and support families of detainees, then return to Kherson, still battered by bombardment, to help rebuild.

Despite everything, he says one truth endures: “The main thing is to have your loved ones close. Everything else can be repaired, overcome or changed."