Shortly after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yulia Matveyeva, a judge from Mariupol, was captured by Russian soldiers. She spent seven months in captivity, where she was subjected to physical and psychological violence. In May, she was offered a seat on the Supreme Court of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” but she refused — and was later accused of crimes against the self-proclaimed republic’s “constitutional order and security,” which is punishable by death. The trial against Matveyeva was originally slated for September but was postponed, and in October, she was freed as part of a prisoner exchange. The Ukrainian outlet Graty recently told Matveyeva’s story, from Russia’s first strikes on Mariupol to her reunion with her family in Kyiv. With Graty’s permission, Meduza retells the report in English.
On the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mariupol judge Yulia Matveyeva didn’t initially realize that a full-scale war had begun, despite hearing explosions in the city that morning. Over time, the blasts became louder, but Matveyeva was reluctant to leave Mariupol; the following week, she was slated to preside over a hearing to extend the arrest of a man charged with a serious crime. “I didn’t want him to get released because of me,” she said.
After the hearing, Matveyeva and her family — her mother, her husband Artyom, and their daughter — started preparing to evacuate. By that point, the situation had become more complicated; in mid-March, the city’s Azovmash manufacturing plant and the Ilyich iron and steel works, both of which were relatively close to the family’s home, came under heavy fire; shells frequently hit the apartment buildings neighboring theirs. They finally decided to leave on March 15 when a shell hit their building directly. By the time they left, four days later, according to Matveyeva, Mariupol had turned into a “ghost town.”
