Trudy Rubin: Ukraine’s ‘Birdie,’ freed from captivity, recalls the horrors Russia inflicted on female POWs

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KYIV, Ukraine — It was almost impossible to associate the red-haired young woman I met in a café with her experiences in the innermost circle of Russian hell. But the memories of deaths, torture, beatings, and sexual violence, witnessed and experienced, clearly haunted her even as she spoke calmly and occasionally laughed.

Kateryna Polishchuk, known throughout Ukraine as the “Birdie” of Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks, sang for starving and dying Ukrainian troops holed up there for weeks after the February 2022 Russian invasion. Her songs — shared on social media — inspired Ukrainians still dazed by the war.

Surrounded, cut off, the Azovstal fighters finally surrendered to the Russians on May 16, 2022, and disappeared into brutal prisoner-of-war prisons where all were tortured, many murdered, and others are still held. As a combat medic, Polishchuk went with them.

Her story illustrates both the incredible courage of Ukrainian front-liners and Vladimir Putin’s determination to crush Ukrainian independence by the most brutal means.

At the steelworks in Mariupol

“When the war started in 2014, I was just 12, but I knew I would join the war. I didn’t know the war would be waiting for me,” Polishchuk told me. She studied opera, then after graduation joined up as a volunteer paramedic in the Azov battalion the year before the current Russian invasion.

Already in Mariupol when the war started, Polishchuk refused orders to evacuate even though injured by shrapnel, and moved to the steelworks to help wounded soldiers.

“Food and water disappeared quickly, and we had just enough to survive,” she recalled. “I had such a horrible state of feelings when my best friend died in my arms, and the next day my fiancé died the same way.” She flinched only slightly at the recollection: “I felt I was already dead and just surrendered to my situation.”

“In that bleak moment,” Polishchuk said, “I let myself be my real self and die as who I was, and I found out I was a singer.”

She was starving, filthy, and desperate. “Singing reflected my fears when we were under tank shells. I began singing to ease the many injured. It was a situation when I understood I was helpless and was just singing to help them. I didn’t even know the guys made a video. As a result, the whole world learned of us.”

That is when Polishchuk became Ptashka, or Birdie. “I was not afraid of dying but of surrender. I understood I could not trust the Russians, and me as Ptashka, it wouldn’t be easy for me.”

‘Are you serious?’

She was correct. Despite promises by the International Committee of the Red Cross (known as the ICRC) that Ukrainian troops would not be harmed while they were prisoners, Polishchuk said she feared the worst the moment she and her fellow soldiers surrendered. “When we were met by the Russians (after the May surrender), it was understood from the expression in their eyes that it was the end.”

She is deeply bitter at the ICRC’s failure to follow up on its assurances, especially given that the Russians brutally broke every one of those promises. “This organization (the ICRC) made me scream and shout when they called me six months later, after I was exchanged, and asked whether we had any evidence of mistreatment. I asked, ‘Are you serious?’”

Then her memories poured out. Taken to a Russian-run prison in Olenivka, inside the occupied Donbas, “I was immediately put in a 6-foot-by-9-foot room with a cement floor, and I knew where I would spend my youth.” She and the other female medics were often trying to treat 60 or more injured people in a room 13 feet by 19 feet without medicine or bandages.

On July 29, 2022, a mysterious explosion tore through a men’s barracks in Olenivka, killing at least 50 people and injuring scores of others. The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general later concluded the massacre was triggered by a thermobaric Russian grenade launched into the building — one of the conflict’s most infamous war crimes. Of course, Russia blamed Ukraine.

The burning barracks

Polishchuk and her fellow medics were in a neighboring barracks and saw the whole incident unfold.

For three days, the women saw the Russians building trenches around the barracks, and men carrying suitcases entering the empty building. Later they learned the walls had been lined with flammable material.

On the third day, male prisoners from Azovstal were transferred into the building. Shortly before the explosion, “we saw that the number of armed guards was increased and dogs were barking,” Polishchuk said. “We saw all of this and heard the screams.”

No one was allowed to leave the burning barracks, she told me. “We heard the machine guns firing. They were burning for two hours and not released.

“No one entered until the next day. Those who had wounds without fractures were sitting in isolation for one and one-half months and then sent to barracks. When the paramedics were allowed to see the wounded, they had no means to help.”

The Russians never allowed the ICRC to visit after the massacre, or to investigate.

She clasped her hands as she recalled more horrors. She talked in a gush, and the words kept spilling out.

Beatings, torture, humliation

“The premises where we women lived were on the first floor, and all interrogations were conducted on the second floor. When they took the guys for torture, they forced them to undress on the first floor and made them crawl naked on the hallway floor and up the stairs.

“We had a radio but couldn’t overcome the noises we heard, the sounds of beatings, cries, shouts, moans,” Polishchuk said. “We never were allowed to communicate with the men. But sometimes we were able to learn what was done to them.”

Russian guards boasted to the women that they had raped male prisoners with rubber batons, Polishchuk said. As a medic, she witnessed other horrific forms of torture. “The Russians cut off pieces of skin, pulled away nails, and the men were beaten constantly. During the first month, a young guy was brought to us after torture, and the next day he was taken out dead wrapped in a sheet. We were told he hung himself. But we heard shouting from some officers to the guys who killed him not to kill POWs anymore.

“Just a week after I was released, that was when the real hell started in Taganrog” — another prison across the border in Russia to which Olenivka prisoners were sometimes transferred — “I understood how lucky I was.”

Conditions in Olenivka were horrible, Polishchuk said, “but in Taganrog, they beat women three times a day and forced them to undress and crawl along the corridor naked. They made them do a split and sit for hours. When you are stretched like that, they beat you between the legs with heavy footwear. All the women were beaten on their heads and forced to pull out their hair one by one. They humiliate them nonstop.”

“One time a woman from Taganrog was brought to us who had been three months pregnant, but they beat the baby out of her and tortured her with dogs. I know a lot of cases of heavy, severe rapes,” she said.

Polishchuk talked only briefly of the one serious rape threat against her during an interrogation. Her response to her armed attacker was to start talking incoherently and nonstop until her startled interrogator got confused and fed up.

“He didn’t expect such a reaction,” so he told the armed guards to “take this one away and never let her come here again.”

“I didn’t perceive myself as a prisoner, but as a national symbol,” Polishchuk said. “This was the only thing that let me survive. As if you are in hell and meant for death, but you have to stay alive.”

As a Ukrainian symbol, she was treated more harshly than other female prisoners, she said. “I was constantly taken for interrogations. They slapped you between the legs and threw you on the floor.

“I stood up with my head proudly”

“But I decided, if you can’t change the situation, change your attitude toward the situation. These are adult guys with weapons who are beating a girl of 20. I stood up with my head proudly.”

She refused to give propaganda interviews to the fake Russian and Ukrainian separatist journalists sent to interview her. Or to drink with Russian colonels she was brought to meet who were sitting with big whiskey glasses at 10 a.m.

“I just came to terms with the idea I would die. I had nothing left. If I was tortured to death, I would be a cause for an uprising. I was living for my country and understood that my death would be a positive role.

“There was one time when the other girls (medics) asked me to sing, and the guards did also. I sang in an operatic voice, ‘hazel eyes, brown eyebrows,’ in Ukrainian. I finished this chorus, and there was a moment all over the barracks when you could hear 30 seconds of complete silence. Then one of the security guards started clapping, and then there was a huge wave of applause from the guys (we were treating) who had been tortured, and from the security guards, and the girls.

“The guards came back with cookies for each of us. And they asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I am defending my country.’ The commanders were very angry at the guards for letting me sing, and I was banned from ever singing again.”

Polishchuk was released in a prisoner exchange on Sept. 21, 2022, after more than four months in captivity. Her eyes were taped, and she thought until the last moment that she was being taken to Taganrog.

Once free, she immediately reenlisted as a medic on the front lines.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email address is trubin@phillynews.com

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A downtown St. Paul church opposes an 88-unit supportive housing facility by Dorothy Day Center

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An affordable housing developer has entered a purchase agreement to convert Catholic Charities’ vacant Mary Hall building in downtown St. Paul into an 88-unit supportive housing facility for the recently-homeless. Those plans have drawn the attention of a seemingly unlikely opponent — the neighboring Catholic church where Catholic Charities was founded.

Aeon, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that has been building affordable housing since the 1980s, requested that the city make an exception to zoning rules that require a 600 foot buffer between “congregate living facilities.”

The future Aeon apartment building would be 60 feet from Catholic Charities’ longstanding Dorothy Day/Higher Ground homeless shelter, which already offers apartment-style housing with support services on its upper levels, requiring what’s known as a “major variance.”

So far, city officials have smiled on the plan. The St. Paul Board of Zoning Appeals voted 5-0 to grant Aeon’s variance request on June 24.

But the decision allowing construction to move forward at 438 Dorothy Day Place has drawn opposition from the downtown Church of the Assumption on West Seventh Street. The Catholic parish, which dates to the 1850s, filed an appeal to the St. Paul City Council, which will host a public hearing on the matter next month.

“This is a substantial variance which reduces the required separation by 90%,” reads the church’s appeal. “The Board of Zoning Appeals disregarded clear testimony that a concentration of similar housing has already resulted in increased crime and diminished safety to residents, guests and visitors to the immediate neighborhood.”

A spokesperson for the church could not be reached for comment on Thursday. The city council, which cannot comment on appeals in advance of a public hearing because it serves in a quasi-judicial role, will hear from both sides on Aug. 7.

Housing for the very poor

On its website, the church notes that it sits “tucked in the heart of downtown St. Paul … close to the Dorothy Day Center and Catholic Charities, places that care for society’s overlooked. It was at the Assumption that Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis was born. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the church ran an orphanage, known today as St. Joseph’s Home for Children.”

The six-story Mary Hall has been used as housing — including housing for the very poor — since its construction in the 1920s as a dormitory for student nurses. The site has a longstanding history of providing services for the homeless, though its been vacant since 2019, when Catholic Charities completed the construction of the two-building Dorothy Day Place campus, which is located next door to Mary Hall.

Dorothy Day Place currently serves nearly 1,000 people per day through both emergency shelter and permanent housing with supportive services. About 75 residents were relocated there from Mary Hall when the former closed five years ago. In 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, Ramsey County used Mary Hall as a temporary location for people experiencing homelessness and showing symptoms of COVID-19. Among other uses, it housed the Listening House day program.

“For decades, Catholic Charities Mary Hall served as a hub where Catholic Charities and other service providers offered shelter, housing and services to those in need,” said Catholic Charities’ spokesperson Therese Gales.

Affordable housing concentration

Still, arguments that affordable housing has become too concentrated in downtown St. Paul and other corners of the Twin Cities are mounting.

Located above Catholic Charities’ St. Paul Opportunity Center, the Dorothy Day Residence consists of 177 housing units, including 77 efficiency apartments and 100 single-room occupancy units. The Higher Ground St. Paul residences, located above the Higher Ground St. Paul shelter next door, has 193 single-room occupancy units.

A year ago, a group of Black ministers associated with the StairStep Foundation filed a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota, Minnesota Housing and the Metropolitan Council, accusing state and regional funders of placing too many affordable units along the Green Line in St. Paul and in other low-income, high-minority urban areas ill-equipped to provide resources for those in need.

But efforts to relocate services for the very poor to wealthier areas have sometimes withered against fierce community opposition.

Ramsey County this year announced plans to relocate its Safe Space overnight emergency shelter from downtown Kellogg Boulevard to the Luther Seminary campus in St. Anthony Park, but had to scrap those plans when Luther pulled out of the arrangement after heavy criticism from residential neighbors.

Aeon has been working on the Mary Hall project “for a number of years,” said Laura Monn Ginsburg, a spokesperson for the nonprofit, in a written statement. “We have observed and share many of the same concerns as the Church regarding safety and security in the area and have made commitments for increased resident services and safety provisions based on the environment.”

“This housing is intended to provide a continuum of housing to serve residents as they are ready to be stabilized in the community,” she continued. “We see the area as a focal point to stabilize broadly – our lens does not just focus on the Mary Hall development. We look forward to working with the Church of the Assumption and stakeholders as a collective to strengthen stability in this area.”

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Today in History: July 12, Disco Demolition Night

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Today is Friday, July 12, the 194th day of 2024. There are 172 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On July 12, 1979, as an angry reaction to the popularity of disco music, the Chicago White Sox held the “Disco Demolition Night” promotion, in which a crate of disco records was blown up on the field between games of a double-header; the ensuing riot and damage to the field caused the White Sox to forfeit the second game.

Also on this date:

In 1543, England’s King Henry VIII married his sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr.

In 1812, United States forces led by Gen. William Hull entered Canada during the War of 1812 against Britain. (However, Hull retreated shortly thereafter to Detroit.)

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In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill authorizing the Army Medal of Honor.

In 1909, the House of Representatives joined the Senate in passing the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, allowing for a federal income tax, and submitted it to the states. (It was declared ratified in February 1913.)

In 1962, the Rolling Stones played their first show, at the Marquee Club in London.

In 1967, rioting erupted in Newark, New Jersey, over the police beating of a Black taxi driver; 26 people were killed in the five days of violence that followed.

In 1984, Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale announced his choice of U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York to be his running-mate; Ferraro was the first woman to run for vice president on a major-party ticket.

In 1991, Japanese professor Hitoshi Igarashi, who had translated Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” was found stabbed to death, nine days after the novel’s Italian translator was attacked in Milan.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton, visiting Germany, went to the eastern sector of Berlin, the first U.S. president to do so since Harry Truman.

In 2003, the USS Ronald Reagan, the first carrier named for a living president, was commissioned in Norfolk, Virginia.

In 2012, a scathing report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh said the late Joe Paterno and other top Penn State officials had buried child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky more than a decade earlier to avoid bad publicity.

In 2022, Twitter sued Elon Musk to force him to complete the $44 billion acquisition of the social media company after Musk said he was backing off his agreement to buy the company. (He would eventually become Twitter’s owner three months later.)

Today’s Birthdays:

Writer Delia Ephron is 80.
Fitness guru Richard Simmons is 76.
Singer Walter Egan is 76.
Writer-producer Brian Grazer is 73.
Actor Cheryl Ladd is 73.
Gospel singer Ricky McKinnie (The Blind Boys of Alabama) is 72.
Gospel singer Sandi Patty is 68.
Actor Mel Harris is 68.
Boxing champion Julio Cesar Chavez is 62.
Rock singer Robin Wilson (Gin Blossoms) is 59.
Actor Lisa Nicole Carson is 55.
Olympic gold medal figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi is 53.
CBS newsman Jeff Glor is 49.
Actor Anna Friel is 48.
R&B singer Tracie Spencer is 48.
US Senator Kyrsten Sinema is 48.
Actor Topher Grace is 46.
Actor Michelle Rodriguez is 46.
Country singer-musician Kimberly Perry (The Band Perry) is 41.
Actor Natalie Martinez is 40.
Actor Ta’Rhonda Jones is 36.
Golfer Inbee Park is 36.
Actor Rachel Brosnahan is 34.
Olympic gold medal gymnast Jordyn Wieber is 29.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai is 27.
NBA guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is 26.
Soccer player Vinicius Junior is 24.

Iowa man convicted of murdering a police officer who tried to arrest him

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Jurors on Thursday convicted an Iowa man of first-degree murder in the shooting death of a police officer who was trying to arrest him.

Kyle Ricke, 43, faces life in prison for the murder of 33-year-old Algona Police Officer Kevin Cram, the Des Moines Register reported. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 21.

Cram was on patrol in Algona, a community of about 5,300, when he learned of an arrest warrant for Ricke on a charge of harassment, investigators have said. The officer saw Ricke and told him he would be arrested. That’s when Ricke shot him, according to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

Prosecutors said Ricke shot Cram eight times. He allegedly told his sister days before the shooting that he would not go back to jail. Video shows Ricke shouting, “Too late!” at Cram after the officer fell to the ground.

Video also shows Ricke then trying to shoot himself, but there were no bullets left in his gun. He fled but was arrested later that day in Brown County, Minnesota, which is about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of Algona.

Defense attorney Barbara Westphal argued that the shooting was not planned.

“Mr. Ricke did not have the mindset to reflect on what he was doing. He was acting out of instinct,” she said. “He did not have the time to ponder what he was doing.”

Half the courtroom was filled with Cram’s family and other supporters, some of whom wept as the verdict was read about an hour after jurors began deliberation, according to the Des Moines Register. Ricke showed no apparent reaction to the verdict, the newspaper reported.

Prosecutor Scott Brown told the newspaper that Cram’s family was glad to see his killer face justice.

“I think they’re relieved, mainly, that this process is over, and the result is what they expected,” he said. “It’s been a long road, even though it was less than a year to get this to trial. It was still tough for them, and it will continue to be difficult.”

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