'Russians invaded my house and held a Ukrainian soldier captive there'

Marina Perederii’s home in the small mining city of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine was her pride and joy.

17 Sadovaya Street was little more than a shell when she and her husband bought it.

They lovingly renovated the house, painting cherry blossom and doves – symbols of love and well-being – in their bedroom. They built a swimming pool in the garden and a sauna in the basement.

“Everything was planned with such passion,” she tells the BBC World Service. But the peace wasn’t to last.

In February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Marina’s husband went to fight while she took their children and ran. Before fleeing, she recorded what she thought could be her last glimpse of their home.

“My dear house, I don’t know if you will stand or not. I don’t know if we’ll ever return here… or if we’ll even survive at all,” she said in a video.

The next time she saw her home was a year later in February 2023, through the eyes of a Russian soldier, in bodycam footage posted on social media.

A marine going by the name Fima was in her living room, flicking through photos of Marina and her family. “Beautiful,” he said, looking at one photo.

It was a chilling image that made her angry. “I wish I had taken the albums with me,” Marina says.

Ukraine spent two and a half years defending Vuhledar before Russia took control of the city at the start of October.

During the long battle, in late January 2023, Fima had led a group of soldiers to the suburbs and got caught in heavy fighting on Sadovaya Street. He and some others entered Marina’s home.

As his bodycam footage went viral back home, Fima was hailed as a hero. Official documents show that he was recalled from the front in February 2023 because of a leg wound.

But what the footage didn’t show was that the Russians were keeping a Ukrainian soldier captive in Marina’s basement, who was starving and in desperate need of medical care. His name was Oleksii.

Before the war, Oleksii worked as an IT specialist. When Russia invaded his country, he volunteered to fight and later became a drone operator in Vuhledar. His love of dancing earned him the nickname Dancer.

When the Russians broke through Ukrainian lines in late January 2023, Oleksii and his comrades tried to retreat, but some of them, including Oleksii were shot.

Wounded, they were taken from house to house by Russian soldiers, with Oleksii eventually ending up in the basement of Marina’s home.

He was held captive for almost a month – Russian footage uploaded online shows him wrapped in one of Marina’s carpets.

When the Russian soldiers eventually retreated, they left Oleksii behind. In all he spent 46 days in Marina’s house and for much of that time he had barely any food or water.

Injured, starving and dehydrated, he was unable to leave the building.

“I was able to find some crumbs on the floor,” he tells the BBC World Service from Kyiv.

“There was a piece of cracker, which a mouse stole from me at night. I hid it, and then the mouse probably stole it because I couldn’t find it.”

But hunger was nothing compared to thirst. One day, after the Russians had left, the desperate need for water almost killed Oleksii.

He tore panels from the sauna in the hope that there might be water inside the pipes. He managed to break one open and drank some of the liquid inside, but it was antifreeze. Those few sips caused internal burns and were nearly fatal.

Then, in March that year, when Ukrainian forces retook parts of Vuhledar and reached Sadovaya Street, another video from Marina’s home went viral. It shows ex-New Zealand soldier Kane Te Tai entering number 17 and finding Oleksii.

“New Zealand, New Zealand, it’s me!” Oleksii shouts at his colleague, who had travelled to fight for Ukraine. Te Tai died in battle just two weeks later.

Oleksii was carried out of the house and to safety.

Had he been left just a few more days, Oleksii says he wouldn’t have made it.

Several other Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are known to have died in and around Sadovaya Street during the battle for Vuhledar.

“Thank God Oleksii survived. But the fact that people died in my house, it shocked me,” she says. “There is only death in there.”

The BBC World Service asked the Russian Ministry of Defence about Oleksii’s treatment but received no response.

Half a year after Oleksii’s rescue, his Russian captor was being lauded at home. He was no longer just referred to by his call sign, Fima, but by his first name, Andrei. State TV footage shows him re-enacting the Vuhledar assault and sharing his experiences with primary school children, where teachers present him as a hero.

The BBC compared this footage with photographs of Andrei from hundreds of social media profiles and found a match – the same hairline, the same mole on the neck, and clear evidence of a leg injury.

His full name is Andrei Efimkin – a 28-year-old born in Russia’s Far East.

We contacted him and asked about the video from Sadovaya Street, particularly where he flicked through the photos of Marina’s family. He told us he was playing a “psychological trick” on himself due to the incoming gunfire.

“I grabbed the album and started looking at the photos to distract myself,” he said.

“You know, actually, I felt so cold-blooded. For a second, to be honest, these thoughts ran through my mind – about who lived here.”

But when asked about Marina directly, Efimkin said he didn’t want to answer any more questions and ended the call.

Marina is now in Germany. As time passes, she is trying to build a new life, learn a new language and find bits of work here and there – but she still grieves her lost home in Vuhledar.

“It’s so hard. I can still see my house in my dreams, it’s always in my head. I still hope that Ukraine will win and everything will be fine, we will come back,” she says.

“My land is there, the air is mine.”

But back on Sadovaya Street there is almost nothing left of her beloved house, which once again is no more than a shell.

It can be recognised in drone footage shot from the air by a blue spot, where her swimming pool used to be, standing out against a backdrop of grey rubble.