I viewed an interview by Lieutenant Ilia Samoilenko of the Azov Regiment when they were held up in the Mariupol Steel Works in May 2022. He was interviewed by Sky News, it was looking very grim, they were not sure if they were going to survive, it was looking less than likely.

During the siege, Samoilenko became the spokesman for the Azov Regiment, taking interviews from deep within the steelworks. Samoilenko is highly educated studying history at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Lieutenant Samoilenko is well spoken, he firstly criticised politicians for not providing the regiment with enough weaponry and then went on to ask the global community for assistance – it worked.

Samoilenko joined the Azov Regiment in 2015 after the Russian invasion of Crimea and the ongoing insurgency in the Donbas region. Samoilenko lost his left arm and right eye when munitions exploded in his hand when he was on a mission in the eastern Donbas in 2018. Samoilenko rehabilitated himself and rejoined his comrades in the Azov Regiment as his goal to expel the Russian invaders from Ukraine had not yet been achieved.

Samoilenko’s statement during the siege of “we are taking losses, everyday might be our last.” He then followed up “as for now, the result of this might be our imminent death or capture by the enemy which also means death for us and the consequences of this might be very catastrophic for the Ukrainian defence and the Ukrainian state.”

Lieutenant Samoilenko also explained “Our lives mean nothing, but our fight means everything” and he did not see surrender as a realistic option. Regardless, he stated that they had not been ordered to surrender and they would not break orders. Lieutenant Samoilenko was forthright when he stated that they witnessed Russian war crimes and they would not be kept alive as these witnesses. Ultimately, they were ordered to surrender on May 16 by their commanders after a deal of sorts was reached.

I had been trying to follow Lieutenant Samoilenko after that surrender and evacuation, they were bused to the Olenivka detention centre in Donetsk, a region under control by the Russian backed separatists. I could not find any information on him or the regiment and was concerned, I had grave concerns he and his comrades would just disappear. They were then transferred to an undisclosed location in Russia where some are still imprisoned,

When the Olenivka detention centre housing Ukrainian prisoners of war were held including members of the Azov Regiment, I was pretty sure Russia was looking for a way of making the hated Azov Regiment disappear. There were 50 deaths from that explosion, naturally the Russian attempted to blame the explosion on a Himar missile strike claiming that the Ukrainian government was trying to kill their own soldiers.

The Russians claimed the Ukrainian government was trying to get rid of these fighters despite being national heroes. The international community did not believe these claims Samoilenko was then held for 120 days in solitary confinement, there have been claims the the Azov Regiment soldiers had been tortured by their Russian captors, currently Samoilenko is not making these claims. Lieutenant Samoilenko was released from captivity during a prisoner swap in September 2022 and reunited with his family. There are still members of the Azov Regiment imprisoned in undisclosed locations in Russia.