- April 29, 2026
- 7:12 pm
- World News
Testimonies of Tayra, given to the US Helsinki Commission on September 15, 2022, are once again spreading online. Against the backdrop of the ongoing war, the topics of Ukrainian prisoners and Russian war crimes, this text once again sounds like a relevant testimony.
Who is Tayra and why are her testimonies important again
Yulia Paievska, known by the call sign Tayra, is a Ukrainian volunteer medic, athlete, and founder of a medical evacuation team that has been helping the wounded in the war since 2014. In the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion, she worked in besieged Mariupol, where the city quickly became a symbol of destruction, pain, and war crimes.
On September 15, 2022, Tayra testified at the US Helsinki Commission hearings titled “My ‘Hell’ in Russian Captivity”. It was not a typical political speech. She spoke as a person who saw Mariupol from the inside, saved the wounded, went through Russian captivity, and emerged with direct testimony about what happens to Ukrainian military and civilians in the hands of the occupiers.
According to confirmed data, Paievska was detained in the Mariupol area in March 2022 and spent about three months in Russian captivity. Her release was announced on June 17, 2022.
For the Israeli audience, this story is important not only as a Ukrainian tragedy. It shows how the Russian war machine works: first the destruction of the city, then filtration, captivity, torture, propaganda, and the attempt to turn the victim into a “Nazi” through television accusations.
Why Russia called her a “Nazi”
In her testimonies, Tayra directly explained that Russians call “Nazis” anyone who resists or simply does not want to see Russia in Ukraine. This is a typical technique of Russian propaganda: to remove responsibility from the aggressor and present the victim as a threat.
Tayra said that she spent the first 20 days of the full-scale war in Mariupol. After that, there were three months of Russian captivity. She described both with one word — hell.
Her image particularly irritated Russian propaganda. A female medic who saved people, documented what was happening, and became known outside Ukraine did not fit into the Kremlin’s myth of the “special operation”. Therefore, they tried to break her not only physically but also informationally.
What Tayra saw in Mariupol and Russian captivity
Mariupol in her story is not an abstract point on the map. It is hospitals without medicines, evacuation vehicles arriving every few minutes, wounded soldiers and civilians, children who could no longer be saved, people collecting water from puddles, and a city where domestic dogs dragged human remains through the streets.
The original text contains a phrase about “half a million people dying under airstrikes”. Factually, it is more accurate to write not about the “half a million” dead, but about a city with hundreds of thousands of residents who found themselves under methodical Russian strikes. Before the war, Mariupol’s population was approximately hundreds of thousands, and the scale of destruction and casualties became one of the most severe pages of the first months of the invasion. Therefore, in the final text, it is better to avoid the literal impression that all the city’s residents died.
Tayra spoke of a dead child in a mother’s arms, a seven-year-old boy with a gunshot wound who died in her arms, prisoners who screamed in cells for weeks and died from torture without medical help. These are not artistic images. This is the testimony of a person who worked next to death and then found herself in a system of violence.
Captivity as a system, not an accident
The most terrifying part of her testimony is not just the description of pain. It is terrifying that Tayra speaks of a system.
According to her, prisoners were forced to undress before torture, the cases against detainees were almost identical, only the names changed, and sometimes the gender of the person was not even corrected in the documents. This means not an investigation, but a factory of accusations, where confessions are extracted through torture, and a person is deprived of the right to defense in advance.
One of the Ukrainian soldiers, according to her, was dying in the next cell for six days. He screamed alone, without help. On the seventh day, his cellmates carried out his body for the guards to take what was left of him.
Such details are hard to read, but they explain why the issue of Ukrainian prisoners remains not a secondary topic, but one of the main humanitarian fronts of the war.
What this says to Israel
Israel knows well what hostages, captivity, torture, propaganda, and the attempt to dehumanize the victim are. Therefore, Tayra’s testimonies should resonate here especially sharply.
For the Russian-speaking community in Israel, for Ukrainians, for people from the former USSR, and for everyone who understands the price of totalitarian violence, this is not a “distant Ukrainian story”. It is a reminder: when an aggressor is allowed to act with impunity, he repeats crimes again and again.
In this context, NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers Tayra’s story as important testimony not only about Mariupol but also about the nature of the Russian war. It is not about the random cruelty of individual soldiers, but about the logic of an empire that believes it can do anything.
Why Tayra speaks about Russia’s impunity
In her testimonies, Tayra formulated the main reason for Russian cruelty very simply. One of the executioners asked her if she knew why he was doing it. She replied: because he can.
This phrase explains a lot.
Russia did this in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine. The world too often watched, expressed concern, imposed partial measures, and then returned to business and diplomatic convenience. As a result, Moscow developed the feeling that violence works, and the price for it will always be lower than the benefit.
Tayra called the Russian empire a “colossus on clay feet”. For her, this is not a metaphor from a textbook. It is the conclusion of a person who saw how a brutal system can seem huge and invincible, but inside it is held together by fear, lies, and the world’s habit of retreating.
What the free world must do
Tayra’s main practical appeal concerned prisoners. She said that the world must seek UN and Red Cross access to Ukrainian military and civilians held in occupied territories and Russian structures. According to her, Russia often hides behind so-called “LNR” and “DNR”, shifting responsibility to puppet formations, although everyone understands that without Moscow such decisions are not made.
She also spoke about the need for honest investigations, trials of Russian war criminals, treatment, and psychological assistance to war victims.
A separate part of her address was devoted to Russian propaganda. Tayra emphasized that propaganda is one of the regime’s main weapons because it deprives people of the right to life even before missiles, artillery, or executioners in cells strike them.
Why this story should not disappear from memory
Tayra’s testimonies were given in September 2022, but in 2026 they have not become an archive. On the contrary, they sound even harsher because the war continues, Ukrainian prisoners remain in the Russian system, and the world faces the question again and again: where is the line between sympathy and real action.
For Israel, this topic is especially sensitive. A country that demands the release of its hostages and rightly speaks about the crimes of terrorists cannot fail to understand Ukrainian pain. Captivity is not statistics. It is faces, names, families, bodies that are broken, and memory that is attempted to be destroyed.
Tayra’s story is a testimony about Mariupol, Russian captivity, and a world that for too long allowed Russia to believe in its own impunity. But it is also a story of resistance. She refused to end her life, refused to accept the imposed role, survived, and became the voice of those who still cannot speak for themselves.
That is why such testimonies need to be reread not as the past, but as a warning.
Who is Tayra: briefly for Israeli readers
Yulia Georgievna Paievska, known by the call sign Tayra, is a Ukrainian military paramedic, volunteer, designer, athlete, and aikido coach. She was born on December 19, 1968, in Kyiv. By profession, Paievska is a designer and has also been an aikido coach for over 20 years and heads the Mutokukai-Ukraine federation.
For those in Israel hearing this name for the first time: Tayra is not a political symbol created by the media, but a person who has been working in the war zone in Donbas since 2014 and helping the wounded. She founded the volunteer evacuation-medical unit “Tayra’s Angels”. The call sign “Tayra” appeared after the start of the war in Donbas; the team itself was named by analogy with “Charlie’s Angels”.
In 2018, Paievska signed a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and served in the AFU until 2020, heading the evacuation department of the 61st mobile hospital in Mariupol. After completing the contract, she continued her volunteer work. By that time, it is reported, she helped save about 500 Ukrainian soldiers.
A separate part of her biography is related to sports. In 2018, Yulia Paievska participated in the Invictus Games in Sydney and won a gold medal in swimming and a bronze medal in archery. In 2020, she was the only woman in the national team of Ukraine at the Invictus Games in The Hague.
After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Tayra recorded her work with the wounded in Mariupol and the actions of Russian military on Ukrainian territory on a portable camera. On March 15, 2022, she handed these materials to an Associated Press correspondent. The next day, on March 16, 2022, Paievska was captured by Russian military along with her driver while escorting several orphaned children out of Mariupol through a “green corridor”.
Russian media then began a campaign of accusations against her. According to the biographical reference, she was accused of various crimes, up to absurd statements about selling bodies from Mariupol to Western clinics for organs. International media and Ukrainian officials expressed concern for her fate.
On June 17, 2022, Tayra was released from Russian captivity. This was announced by the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in an evening address. Later, on July 9, 2022, she spoke about the conditions of detention in captivity.
For Israeli readers, it is important to understand the main thing: Tayra became known not because of a loud status, but because of specific work — evacuating the wounded, helping on the front, testimonies about Mariupol, and her own experience of Russian captivity. In 2022, she was included in the list of the 100 most inspiring and influential women in the world according to the BBC, and in 2023 she received the International Women of Courage Award.