Do you tell your mom what it’s like to be tortured?
Serhiy Hrebinyk, 25, decided to keep it to himself. For now.
After more than three years in four different Russian prisons as a Ukrainian prisoner of war, there were some things he could tell her. About the time he got to play in a chess tournament arranged by his guards. Or when he got to read the novel “The Three Musketeers” by Alexandre Dumas.
Or how when he came home to the northeastern town of Trostyanets last month, it looked much different from when he left in 2021.
That was before the Russians launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine, briefly occupying his hometown while he was hundreds of miles away and under siege in the southern city of Mariupol. He was captured in April 2022, and he was freed in a prisoner exchange of Russian and Ukrainian troops in June.
“To be honest, he doesn’t share much with me now,” said his mother, Svitlana. “Maybe it’s even better not to ask and not to know.”
Mr. Hrebinyk represents the vanguard of a generation of Ukrainian men shaped by the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. His trauma and his recovery are intertwined with Ukraine’s fate. Even as diplomatic machinations go on, those who survive will determine Ukraine’s future.
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