Marina Perederii was proud of her home in the small mining town of Vuhledar, in eastern Ukraine.
When she and her husband purchased 17 Sadovaya Street, it was little more than an empty shell.
They renovated their house with love, painting cherry blossoms and doves in their bedroom – symbols of well-being and love. They built a pool in the backyard and a sauna down in the basement.
She tells BBC World Service that “everything was planned with such passion”. But the peace was not to last.
In February 2022, Russia will launch its full-scale invasion into Ukraine. Marina ran away with their children while her husband went to battle. Before fleeing she recorded what she believed to be her last view of their home.
“My dear home, I don’t even know if you can stand. She said in a YouTube video that she didn’t know whether they would ever return to the house or if they would survive.
The next time she saw home was in February 2023 through the eyes and bodycam footage of a Russian soldier.
Fima, a marine who goes by the name of Marina, was flicking through pictures of Marina and her entire family in her living room. “Beautiful,” said the man, as he looked at a photo.
She was angry because of a chilling picture. Marina says, “I wish I’d taken the albums along with me.”
Ukraine spent over two years defending Vuhledar, before Russia took control at the beginning of October.
Fima led a group to the suburbs in late January 2023. He was caught up in heavy fighting in Sadovaya Street. He and others entered Marina’s house.
Fima’s bodycam footage was widely circulated in his home country, and he was hailed a hero. Documents show that he had to be recalled in February 2023 due to a leg injury.
What the footage did not show was that the Russians held a Ukrainian soldier hostage in Marina’s cellar, who was starving. He was in desperate need of medical attention. His name was Oleksii.
Oleksii was an IT specialist before the war. He volunteered to fight when Russia invaded and later became a Vuhledar drone operator. Dancer is his nickname because of his love for dancing.
Oleksii, his comrades, and some of the Russians who broke through the Ukrainian lines in January 2023 were all shot.
The Russian soldiers took them from house to home, and eventually found Oleksii in the basement of Marina’s house.
He was held hostage for almost a whole month. Russian footage posted online shows him wrapped up in one of Marina’s carpets.
Oleksii was left behind by the Russian soldiers when they eventually retreated. He spent 46 days in Marina’s house, and for most of that time had little food or water.
He was injured, dehydrated and starving.
“I found some crumbs on my floor,” he told the BBC World Service.
“A mouse stole a cracker from me in the night.” I hid it and the mouse stole it because I couldn’t find it.
But thirst was worse than hunger. After the Russians left, Oleksii’s desperate thirst nearly killed him one day.
He tore the panels off the sauna in hopes that there was water inside the pipes. He broke one open and drank a little of the liquid, but it turned out to be antifreeze. These few sips almost killed him.
Another video from Marina’s house went viral in March of that year when Ukrainian forces retook part of Vuhledar, and reached Sadovaya Street. It shows an ex-New Zealander soldier Kane Te Tai finding Oleksii at number 17.
Oleksii shouts to his colleague who had traveled to fight for Ukraine: “New Zealand, New Zealand! It’s me!” Te Tai was killed in battle only two weeks later.
Oleksii is carried safely out of the house.
Oleksii claims that if he had been left for just a few days longer, he would not have survived.
It is known that several other Ukrainian and Russian soldiers died in and around Sadovaya Street, during the battle for Vuhledar.
“Thank God Oleksii survived. “But the fact that people died inside my house shocked me,” she says. “There’s only death there.”
The BBC World Service contacted the Russian Ministry of Defence to inquire about Oleksii’s treatment, but received no reply.
Half a year following Oleksii’s rescue, the Russian captor of his was being lauded in Russia. Andrei was now called by his first name instead of his call sign Fima. State TV footage shows him reenacting the Vuhledar attack and sharing his experience with primary school students, where teachers present Andrei as a hero.
The BBC compared the footage to hundreds of photos of Andrei on social media and found that the hairline and mole on his neck were identical. There was also clear evidence of an injury to the leg.
Number 17: My House of Horrors
A BBC Eye investigation by the World Service reveals that a family house in eastern Ukraine became a backdrop for three lives caught in war – the fleeing homeowner and the starving prisoner.
Watch on BBC iPlayer or BBC World Service YouTube (outside UK).
His full name is Andrei Efimkin, a 28-year old born in Russia’s Far East.
We asked him about the video taken from Sadovaya Street. Specifically, we asked him if he had flicked through photos of Marina’s parents. He said he was playing “a psychological trick” on himself because of the incoming gunfire.
“I grabbed my album and began looking at the pictures to distract myself,” said he.
“You know, in fact, I felt cold-blooded. To be honest, I thought about who lived in this house for a moment.
When asked directly about Marina, Efimkin refused to answer further questions and ended the phone call.
Marina is now living in Germany. She is now in Germany.
“It’s hard. In my dreams I can still see the house. “I still hope that Ukraine wins and everything will be fine. We will come back,” says she.
“My air and my land are mine.”
On Sadovaya Street, her beloved home is now almost nothing more than a shell.
In drone footage, you can see a blue spot where her swimming pool was, against a grey background of rubble.
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