For 1,495 days, Major Oleksandr Ivanov’s world was reduced to a concrete cubicle.
This Ukrainian marine was captured during the fighting for the city of Mariupol and imprisoned in a damp, gray cell in a Russian penal colony.
He had no contact with the outside world and no way of knowing if his country was still standing, or even if his wife and young son were alive.
But, in the midst of those dark days, he found something that helped him keep his spirit alive.
Before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Oleksandr was a man dedicated to his duty, serving as a major in the 36th Marine Brigade.
However, spring 2022 changed everything.
Four years in a Russian cell
His last memory of the occupied city of Mariupol was not of combat tactics, but of the “smell of death that permeated the air.”
His wife, Nelly, remembers that last, distressing call.
“He told me, ‘This is the last time I will have contact with you,’” she says.
Days later, a brief text message confirmed that he had been captured.
Oleksandr spent three of his four years of captivity in a colony in the Russian region of Mordovia.
He was held in a small cell with eight other people, who spent most of their time standing.
The cell had a toilet and a sink with cold water, a small bar of soap, a tube of toothpaste and a single roll of toilet paper that everyone had to share each week.
Once every three or four days they were allowed to walk for a period of between two and five minutes.
They received hot food three times a day, but its quality and quantity were so poor that Oleksandr lost 30 kilos during his captivity.
The guards burned the mail that arrived to torment the prisoners, while a radio broadcast incessant propaganda claiming that Ukraine had ceased to exist.
Over the past year, conditions have improved slightly and the frequency of inspections, during which prisoners were often mocked, has been reduced.
Throughout those four years, Oleksandr only managed to send one voice message to his wife. The guards allowed him to dictate three sentences.
The next day, he received an equally brief response. She told him that they had celebrated their son’s birthday, gone to the movies and visited the daycare.
“I realized then that if the children of Mykolaiv – not far from the front – went to the cinema, that meant that everything was fine in Ukraine,” he explains.
Harry Potter in prison
Meanwhile, Nelly was gathering bits of information about her husband.
Everything he learned about his condition and movements came from soldiers released in prisoner exchanges, who had memorized the phone numbers of the families of their fellow captives.
“That’s how I got an idea thanks to people who said: ‘Yes, it was here, then it was in that other place,’” he says.
“That way I knew how healthy he was,” he explains.
One day, Nelly heard something that made her smile: Oleksandr was entertaining his cellmates by telling them the story of Harry Potter.
“I wasn’t surprised,” he says, “but I was happy.”
I thought, ‘If he’s telling the Harry Potter story, maybe the situation isn’t so awful.'”
Oleksandr says that one of the forms of psychological pressure during captivity was to prohibit prisoners from talking to each other.
They spent almost all of their time in their cells—from the time they woke up to the time they went to bed—standing and in silence.
But, one day, Oleksandr confessed to his cellmates that he was a Harry Potter fan and they asked him to tell them the story.
He set one condition: he would narrate the seven books from memory and as faithfully as possible. Everyone accepted.
The Harry Potter saga, by author JK Rowling, came into Oleksandr’s life unexpectedly.
In 2005, when he was in seventh grade, he participated in a children’s television contest and randomly chose the Harry Potter theme.
He was eliminated in the first round, but the saga captivated him forever and he looked forward to each new book.
Later, he read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—the fifth installment—in a single day.
Years later, when he was already a university student, books helped Oleksandr kill time during long journeys through Kyiv.
“I kept reading Harry Potter and it turned out I had it memorized,” he says.
The stories equally captivated those who heard him in prison: men of all ages, from grandfathers to young recruits. For five or six hours a day, Oleksandr whispered the adventures of the Hogwarts heroes to his audience.
He did it as if it were an audiobook: it generated suspense, he paused at key moments and left the plot in suspense.
“After thirty minutes of advertising, you’ll know what happens next,” he said.
At times, Oleksandr would get carried away with enthusiasm and his cellmates would calm him down to avoid attracting the attention of the guards.
After a month he reached the end, but his audience asked him to start again.
During those few hours a day, the inmates no longer felt like they were in a Mordovian prison, but rather in the halls of Hogwarts.
“We felt like prisoners in Azkaban, with the dementors (the villains from the books) outside the cell,” says Oleksandr.
“And what is the best way to combat dementors? With a Patronus (a protective force that drives them away).”
“When a captive believes that someone is waiting for him at home, a Patronus is generated so powerful that no Dementor can penetrate it,” he concludes.
The return
Oleksandr’s knowledge of Harry Potter even influenced his relationship with the prison guards.
When some of them recognized the book-inspired tattoos on his body, they showed what he characterizes as “a certain humanity” and began to speak to him more normally.
Meanwhile, Nelly continued campaigning for her husband’s release.
He wrote to JK Rowling to tell her how Oleksandr had recounted the books during his captivity and how much hope they had given them.
“We believe that happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one remembers to turn on the light,” he wrote, adding: “Oleksandr has become that light for many others.”
There was no answer, but the miracle that Nelly had prayed for so much finally occurred.
On May 15 of this year, he received a message from the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War of Ukraine: Oleksandr was returning home after being released in a prisoner exchange.
Shortly after, he was reunited with his family.
Now, immersed in his recovery, he is trying to make up for four years of lost time.
He says he has received hundreds of messages of support, as well as packages with objects related to Harry Potter sent by people who knew his story.
“I don’t have words to express what this means to me,” he says.
And he says: “I am grateful to everyone and proud to be part of this country.”
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