Kharkiv resident Ihor Shyshko, a former prisoner of war, has said that he lost 50 kilograms during his time in four Russian penal colonies.
He revealed this in an interview with Ukrinform.
“I weighed nearly 110 kilograms when the full-scale invasion began. I probably didn’t lose a single kilogram during a month of combat missions. But after returning to Ukraine, when I was finally weighed, I was just over 60 kilograms,” Shyshko said.
He described the inhumane conditions and poor nutrition Ukrainian prisoners endured.
“We got some kind of porridge in the morning and evening. Lunch looked like slop — 200 grams of liquid from an army food container, with floating bits of cabbage and who knows what else. Sometimes we got fish, but it was mixed into the porridge — tiny fish with sharp bones. We had only 3-5 minutes to eat, and the porridge was scalding hot. Those bones would get stuck in our mouths… The guards watched and enjoyed it,” Shyshko said.
At times, captives were completely deprived of food.
“Sometimes, they deprived us of food, giving us nothing for a long time. And then — suddenly, a whole loaf of bread for each of us. Naturally, after that, our stomachs couldn’t handle it — diarrhea, vomiting. And they would watch as 15 people ran around the cell at once — you understand, the excrement, the discomfort — and they mocked us for it. I don’t even know how to explain what was going on in their heads, psychologically. And I want to point out: there were constant rotations; these guards changed on the 15th and 25th of every month, yet they all acted the same way. And that’s not even counting the actual prison staff. Even their own convicts treated us with the same contempt,” Shyshko said.
For 801 days, Shyshko’s family had almost no news of his fate.
“Three or four months in, they saw on Telegram channels that I was a prisoner. Then, in May 2023, the Red Cross visited us. By September, they relayed a message to my wife, supposedly from me — but they distorted my words so much she couldn’t even tell if it was really from me,” he said.
Shyshko was released on May 31, 2024, during a prisoner exchange. His wife and three children were waiting for him at home. Before the invasion, he worked for the Kharkiv Regional Council but later joined the Kraken unit. Russian forces captured him on March 22, 2022, near Kharkiv.
As of February 5, 2025, 4,131 Ukrainian captives have been returned from Russian imprisonment.
Source: Former POW from Kharkiv says he lost 50 kilograms in Russian captivity
