Svitlana Svitlana

Her torturer asked her one question: “Do you know why I’m doing this to you?” Ukrainian medic Yuliia “Taira” Paievska answered: “Because you can.” That may be one of the most important explanations of Russia’s war against Ukraine ever given. Taira spent the first 20 days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in Mariupol, treating the wounded as the city was being destroyed around her. Then the Russians captured her. She spent three months in captivity. Later, testifying before the U.S. Helsinki Commission, she described what she had witnessed. “My name is Yuliia Paievska. My brothers-in-arms call me Taira. By profession, I am a graphic designer and president of one of Ukraine’s aikido federations. The Russians call me a Nazi. That is what they call everyone who resists them or simply does not want Russia in Ukraine. I spent the first 20 days of this war in Mariupol, which turned into hell. Then I spent three months in Russian captivity. That was hell too.” What followed was testimony that is difficult to read. A dead child in his mother’s arms. A seven-year-old boy with a gunshot wound dying in Taira’s arms because there was nothing she could do to save him. Hospitals overflowing with wounded soldiers and civilians. Painkillers disappearing. Antibiotics running out. Doctors and nurses sleeping three hours a day while operations continued almost without interruption. Medical evacuation vehicles arriving every five or ten minutes, carrying the living and the dead piled together. Cars burning with people trapped inside. Police officers pulling mutilated women and children from ruins. People drinking water from puddles. Former pets wandering the destroyed city carrying human remains. And then came Russian captivity. Taira described prisoners being stripped before being slowly killed. Rooms specifically equipped for torture. Case files copied almost word for word, with only prisoners’ names changed — sometimes, she said, interrogators did not even bother changing the sex of the detainee. There was no real investigation. Confessions and “evidence” were extracted through torture. One Ukrainian soldier was dying in a nearby cell. He screamed for six days. Nobody helped him. On the seventh day, his cellmates placed his body on a stretcher so the guards could remove what remained of him. Another soldier died quietly after torture. He received no medical assistance either. Pregnant prisoners disappeared into captivity while their families had no idea what had happened to them. Taira herself was encouraged by her captors to commit suicide. She refused. She wanted to survive long enough to see how far their cruelty would go. Then, one day, someone looked through the peephole of her cell and called her name: “Take your things. Get out.” Her road back to freedom had begun. But perhaps the most chilling moment of her testimony was her explanation of why all of this happens. One of her torturers asked: “Do you know why I’m doing this to you?” She answered: “Because you can.” He apparently did not expect that answer. But she understood the mechanism perfectly. They do it because they believe they can. Because their leaders told them they have the right. Because they were allowed to believe there would be no consequences. Because the world watched Russian crimes elsewhere and repeatedly convinced itself that accommodation was safer than confrontation. Taira called Russia a “colossus with feet of clay.” Her demand to the free world was simple: do not merely express sympathy. Act. Demand international access to Ukrainian military and civilian prisoners. Force the issue of prisoner exchanges. Investigate torture and war crimes. Treat survivors. Fight Russian propaganda. Hold perpetrators accountable. And continue helping Ukraine defend itself. Because the lesson of her testimony extends far beyond Mariupol: