Serhii Dobrovolskyi, a Ukrainian soldier who had been in Russian captivity since 2023, has died just a month after his release at the end of May as part of a 1000-for-1000 prisoner swap, an official from the soldier's home region announced on June 21.
The case is the latest in a chain of Ukrainian soldiers' unexpected deaths after their return from Russian captivity, highlighting the effects of "widespread and systematic" torture of prisoners of war (POWs) in Russian prisons, reported by the U.N.
"Serhii Dobrovolskyi was released from captivity at the end of May this year. A few days ago, he was met by his fellow townspeople in his hometown," wrote the head of the soldier's native Zdolbuniv district in Rivne Oblast, Vladyslav Sukhliak, on Facebook. The exact cause of death was not immediately announced.
A video posted by the Zdolbuniv city council on June 17 shows Dobrovolskyi being greeted in Zdolbuniv by a crowd chanting the Ukrainian anthem as the soldier is hugging his mother. He was also presented with a korovai, a round bread loaf, as part of the symbolic Ukrainian tradition of welcome with bread and salt.
"Finally, after almost two years, the mother hugged her son," the Zdolbuniv city council commented on the video.
Sukhliak added that Dobrovolskyi was 43 years old at the time of death. "The war with the damned (Russian) occupiers takes lives and health of the defenders," he wrote.
Earlier in June, another Ukrainian soldier returned from Russian captivity had died unexpectedly.
Dmytro Shapovalov, a 32-year-old defender of Ukraine who was exchanged in 2023 after over a year in Russian prisons, had died on June 9, according to the Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne.
His sister Anastasiia said that Shapovalov endured torture, hunger, and psychological pressure in captivity. After his release, Shapovalov returned to military service. He died in his sleep, presumably from heart failure, Suspilne reports.
After his death, a representative of the Coordination Headquarters managing the prisoner swaps, Yuliia Pavliuk, published a video showing Shapovalov eating an apple on the day of his release.
"I had just been dreaming about an apple for a year," Shapovalov says in the video.
In 2023, a high-ranking officer from the "Azov" brigade, Oleh Mudrak, died at 35 years old, months after his release from Russian captivity. As a POW, he survived the Olenivka camp explosion and endured a dramatic weight loss in just 100 days, as seen in the photos published by Stanislav Aseyev, a Ukrainian writer and activist.
Treatment of "Azov" fighters in Russian prisons is notoriously brutal due to their nationalistic values and Russian propaganda that worked for years to smear the unit's reputation both in Russia and internationally.
Some Azov fighters died from torture in Russian captivity or were sentenced to decades in prison for alleged war crimes. Many of them were among the 54 Ukrainian prisoners killed in an explosion in Olenivka penal colony in the Russian-occupied part of Donetsk Oblast on July 28, 2022.
Ukraine accused Russia of orchestrating the explosion, while Russia has been systematically preventing international organizations from conducting an independent investigation on the site of the attack.
The U.N. reported widespread torture of Ukrainian POWs in Russia and brutal conditions of their detention over the past years.
Tim Zadorozhnyy
(Updated: )
