Mariupol is a city in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border.Image: keystone
December 29, 2025, 5:17 p.mDecember 29, 2025, 5:17 p.m
It is May 2022 in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Oleksandr Ivantsov is in an old steel factory. But there is little left of this. The buildings collapsed, burned or bombed.
On May 16, 2022, the order to surrender comes. Almost all of the approximately 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers surrender, which means prisoners of war for them. But Oleksandr refuses to surrender. This is what he writes Mirror.
The steel factory in Mariupol is now used by the Russians.Image: keystone
The few soldiers who do not surrender sit in the steelworks and wait. They wait until the Russians take them prisoner of war and take over the steelworks.
The escape underground
Oleksandr goes to a manhole cover and lifts it up. A ladder appears underneath and at the base of it a low tunnel. He crawls in on his knees; the tunnel is no higher.
In the tunnel there are two sleeping mats and two blankets and all the supplies that the 31-year-old Ukrainian was able to quickly find. Cans of sardines, instant coffee, 2 kilos of sugar, around 20 liters of water.
“I knew that if I didn’t try it, I would regret it forever.”
Ivantsov to fight for his freedom
Oleksandr will stay in the small shaft for ten days. He accepts that he will die in this war, but he doesn’t want the Russians to take him without a fight. He turns off the light of his flashlight. Above him, the Russians storm the steelworks.
Life before the war
Oleksandr Ivantsov was born in 1994 in Luhansk, a major Ukrainian city near the Russian border. His father insists that he do push-ups and pull-ups and learn chess as a child. The chess tactics later saved his life more than once, he says in an interview with “Spiegel”.
He is training to be a chef and dreams of traveling the world. As a teenager, he became part of an ultra-group of fans of FC Zorya Luhansk. He fights with fans of other clubs and senses adventure in this. Today he describes himself as a nationalist.
In 2014, the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was annexed by Russian forces.Image: EPA/EPA
In 2014, separatists seized power in eastern Ukraine with Russian help. Oleksandr leaves his homeland for security reasons.
The beginning of the conflicts
He moves to Kharkiv. In 2015 he learned that a colleague of his had been killed by a Russian. There he made his decision to join the Azov Regiment. He also does this in 2015.
The Azov Regiment, later a brigade, is one of the most controversial in the Ukrainian army. Because it was founded by right-wing extremists and many of the fighters still wear right-wing extremist symbols today. In 2020 he left the regiment and later worked as a security officer on freighter ships off Somalia.
The road to war
Oleksandr’s wife wrote him the following message in February 2022, two days after the start of the war: “Rockets are hitting Kiev.” Oleksandr wants to fight, he will return to Ukraine in March 2022. A recruit tells Oleksandr that his former brigade is looking for volunteers. The aim of the brigade is to break the blockade of Mariupol. Oleksandr gets in touch immediately.
“The desire to fight with them was greater than my fear.”
Oleksandr for voluntarily joining the war
This is how Oleksandr finds himself in the shaft of the Mariupol steelworks in May 2022.
At the time of the surrender order, Oleksandr had already spent weeks in the steelworks. He knows it inside and out. Even before the surrender order, he was looking for corners where he would be protected. He comes across his later hiding place.
On the day of surrender he prepares his hiding place. A comrade who surrenders gives him his smartphone. This contains maps of the front line. As he climbs into his hiding place, he expects that the Russians will search thoroughly for the first few hours, then become less precise after that. They wouldn’t find him that way.
In the underground he learns places on the front by heart, thinks about which route he should take to escape and how he should react if he encounters Russians. Because even if he makes it out of the steelworks, it will still be a good 200 kilometers through enemy-occupied territory.
The days on the way to death
At first he feels safe in his hiding place. But after a few days he gets fever and diarrhea. His strength is dwindling. He feels his body starting to die.
“A part of me died in Mariupol.”
Oleksandr in his hiding place in his time.
On May 24, 2022 at 10 p.m. he crawls out of hiding. He only carries his documents and a little cash. And he was right, the Russians feel safe in the steelworks. They eat and laugh. Oleksandr finds it easy to avoid them. And so he sneaks out of the steelworks. But as soon as he arrived in the destroyed city, Russian checkpoints await him.
The Ukrainian soldier also has to face these. To his astonishment, he is let past and allowed to move on. Until he hears a “hands up.” The Russian soldiers seem to have their doubts about him and arrest him. They question him and search his pockets. Oleksandr says he is a sailor and returned to Ukraine when the war began to save his mother.
The Russians don’t believe him and take him to a kind of tent camp. Oleksandr doesn’t reveal anything, he wears civilian clothes and his old seafarer’s passport identifies him as a sailor. The only thing the Russians have is suspicion. And they follow this up, they take the Ukrainian soldier to an improvised prison.
Bombed houses in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.Image: keystone
There he lies on mattresses on the floor for days, hardly gets any food or water and when he does get it, it is dirty. After a few days, an officer enters Oleksandr’s cell and asks if he finally wants to confess. He just repeats his sailor story.
He is transferred to a prison in Donetsk, where he is interrogated again. But Oleksandr is several steps ahead of the Russians. He has already thought about all possible questions and his answers to them in his hiding place. A few days after his transfer, the Ukrainian soldier is actually released.
The freedom
Oleksandr finds himself on a street in the middle of a destroyed Donetsk. With the money he still has, he buys a cell phone and asks a colleague for help. He contacts the Azov leadership, i.e. the leadership of Oleksandr’s former battalion, but they need time to think about how they can evacuate the soldier from enemy territory.
So Oleksandr goes on foot towards the Ukrainian border. Shortly before the border, he is informed that only vehicles are allowed to drive through the border corridor that has been created.
Oleksandr gets an older woman at a nearby gas station to give him a ride. Even at the border, he lies to the Russians the same story he did when he was in captivity, and it works.
The Russians at the border also believe Oleksandr’s story.Image: keystone
Oleksandr defeated the Russians. Several times. Almost three years have passed since then. Oleksandr thinks every day about his friends who are still prisoners of war after surrendering at the steelworks.
Today Oleksandr defends the Eastern Front of Ukraine. He sends drones across the border into Russia. His dream is to liberate the occupied Ukrainian territories. And at some point he would like to return to his homeland of Luhansk, which has now been annexed by Russia.
Oleksandr wrote a book about what he experienced. The book is translated as “A Summer in Ukraine” and was recently published there. Oleksandr dedicates it to his colleagues from the front.
At some point, he says, he wants to go to Africa, but first he has to defeat the Russians. (nib)