In this picture provided by his family, Maksym Butkevych is pictured with his parents, Yevheniia and Oleksandr. Mr. Butkevych was captured in June and is now a prisoner of war held by Russia. Credit… via Oleksandr Butkevych
Maksym Butkevych made a name for himself in Ukraine as a journalist and human rights activist, campaigning for refugees and internally displaced people and serving on the board of directors of Amnesty International’s Ukrainian section.
In late June, he was captured by Russian forces while fighting for Ukraine, and that hard-earned reputation became a potentially dangerous liability.
Russian propaganda began to boast of the arrest of Mr. Butkevych was almost immediately taken hostage, in an ambush on his platoon during the battle for the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk. His family and friends initially chose to remain silent, hoping that silence would speed up the process of bringing him home.
But as the pro-Kremlin media has denounced Mr. Butkevych in wild terms, both as a “British spy” (he once worked for the BBC) and a “Ukrainian nationalist”, both a “fascist” and a “radical propagandist” – his colleagues and loved ones have come to fear for his life and have decided to speak publicly about him to clear things up.
The man they know, they say, is the opposite of what appears on Russian television.
“He never accepted either extreme right or extreme left views,” said his mother, Yevheniia Butkevych. “He took shape as a person absolutely alien to extreme positions, which, as a rule, are aggressive.”
In fact, Ms. Butkevych said, her son was a pacifist who had maintained after Russian proxies invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014 that his talents were best used as an activist. But that changed on February 24, when Russian missiles crashed into his hometown of Kyiv and cities and towns across the country.
On the same day, Mr. Butkevych, 45, reported to a military recruiting center.
“He said: ‘I’m going to leave my work for human rights for a while, because now it’s necessary, first of all, to protect the country, because everything I’ve worked for all these years and everything we’ve all worked for, the rules. our lives and our society are now threatened,’” Ms. Butkevych said of what her son, her only child, had told her.
He was called up on March 4 and became a squadron commander around Kyiv, before being sent in mid-June to try to reinforce the army as it struggled to hold Sievierodonetsk.
On June 24, said Ms. Butkevych, a volunteer called her to say a video of her son in captivity was circulating online. His platoon had lost contact with its commanders. When two men went to fetch water, he said, they were captured and then lured the rest of the group into a Russian trap.
“There has never been a worse period in my life,” said Mrs Butkevych, 70.
Her son is one of an estimated 7,200 Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Russia and its proxies in eastern Ukraine. It is a number that dims the prospect of a quick exchange.
“The situation is very complicated, because we have fewer prisoners of war than Russia,” said Tetiana Pechonchyk, co-founder with Mr. Butkevych of the non-profit human rights organization Zmina. “Russia also captures civilians and holds them hostage, and we must exchange those people as well. It is a direct violation of international human rights law.”
Mr. Butkevych’s public profile may help him stay alive, but it may also make him vulnerable to abuse. In an interview with The New York Times, prominent Ukrainian doctor Yulia Paievska detailed the relentless torture and beatings during her three months in Russian custody. They also dragged her in front of television cameras and used her as a prop in an attempt to paint Ukrainians as “Nazis,” one of the Kremlin’s justifications for the invasion.
She said that as harsh as her treatment was, she feared male prisoners faced “much worse”.
Mr. Butkevych last spoke to The Times in May, the day he reopened the Kyiv Opera House; he had come from his barracks to attend the first function.
“It’s a kind of promise that we will prevail. Life will go on, not death,” he said. “It’s important not to forget that this is what we’re fighting for.”
Maria Varenikova contributed to this report.