When Yuriy Hulchuk returned to Ukraine after two and a half years of Russian captivity, he seemed strangely emotionless. A video on social media shows his mother hugging him upon his return, but he doesn't react. Days later, he spoke about the torture he suffered while a prisoner of war.

Hulchuk, 23, was born and raised in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. He studied foreign languages ​​and although he didn't graduate, he was an exchange student in Hungary and Germany and also traveled throughout Europe and China.

When he couldn't find any work, he enlisted in the Ukrainian army in December 2021 to make ends meet. That's how Hulchuk ended up in the 36th Brigade of the Ukrainian Marine Corps, fighting in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol when the full-scale Russian invasion of his country began in 2022.

In April 2022, Hulchuk was captured by Russian forces and spent the next two and a half years in prison, including in the village of Olenivka in Donetsk, in the Russian-occupied part of eastern Ukraine.

The Olenivka prison colony has been described as a "concentration camp" because of the conditions there. In July 2022, over 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war held in Olenivka were killed in an explosion that ripped through the barracks. Ukraine and Russia blamed each other for the incident. An analysis by the United Nations found Russia was likely at fault.

Hulchuk was also held in western Russia in Ryazan, as well as in Mordovia, a Russian republic. He returned home in September 2024 a prisoner exchange,

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