How Mariupol medic smuggled extraordinary video through 15 Russian checkpoints

In a makeshift operating theatre in Mariupol, a celebrated Ukrainian medic pleads with a critically-wounded and bloodied boy to “stay with me, little one”.

He had arrived with his wounded sister from a shoot-out at a checkpoint in the town besieged by Russian forces and in which their parents both died.

Using a body camera given to her by Prince Harry, Yuliia Paievska, known in Ukraine as Tayra – a moniker from the nickname she chose in the World of Warcraft video game – films the tragic moment when she closes his eyes with her fingers.

Turning away from his lifeless body, the medic breaks down in tears. “I hate [this],” she sobs, closing her eyes.

As always, she has a stuffed animal attached to her vest to hand to any children she might treat.

Such terrible scenes would never have reached the wider world had Tayra, 53, not managed to smuggle hundreds of hours of footage out of Mariupol – on a data card no bigger than a thumbnail – in a tampon.

It contains 256 gigabytes of her team’s frantic efforts over two weeks to bring people back from the brink of death – Ukrainians but also Russian soldiers.

Even before the film, Tayra was a household name in Ukraine as a star athlete and the person who trained the country’s volunteer medic force.

Her incredible spirit of resistance shines through as she embraces doctors and cracks jokes to cheer up despondent ambulance drivers and patients alike. At one point, the married mother – who has her own teenage daughter – chides an injured Ukrainian soldier who wants her to ring his mum, telling him to ring her himself but “don’t make her nervous”.

Tayra miraculously managed to hand the harrowing clips to an Associated Press team, the last international journalists in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, as they left in a rare humanitarian convoy.

To salvage the extraordinary video testimony, the team had to pass through 15 Russian checkpoints before reaching Ukrainian-controlled territory.

The next day, on March 16, Tayra disappeared with her driver Serhiy. On that same day, a Russian airstrike shattered the Mariupol theatre and killed close to 600 people.

She is now a prisoner, one of hundreds of prominent Ukrainians who have been kidnapped or captured, including local officials, journalists, activists and human rights defenders.

Tayra took on her name in 2013, when she joined first aid volunteers at the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that ousted a Russia-backed government. In 2014, Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

She went to the eastern Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists fought Ukrainian forces. There, she taught tactical medicine and founded a group of medics called Tayra’s Angels. In 2019, she set up her medical unit in Mariupol.

Before the war, she was a member of the Ukraine Invictus Games for military veterans, where she was set to compete in archery and swimming.

She had received the body camera in 2021 to film for a Netflix documentary series on inspirational figures being produced by Prince Harry, who founded the Invictus Games. But when Russian forces invaded, she trained her lens on injured civilians and soldiers instead.

Ukraine’s government has said it tried to add Tayra’s name to a prisoner exchange weeks ago. However, Russia denies holding her, despite recent footage of her handcuffed and with her face bruised and calling for an end to fighting.

Accusing her of trying to flee the city in disguise, a March 21 Russian news broadcast derides her colleagues as Nazis.

That was the last time she was seen.

Tayra’s husband, Vadim Puzanov, told AP that he had received little news about his wife since her disappearance.

“Accusing a volunteer medic of all mortal sins, including organ trafficking, is already outrageous propaganda – I don’t even know who it’s for,” he said.

Hers is one of 204 cases of enforced disappearances recorded by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine – which said that many victims may have been tortured – five of whom were later found dead.

Shot from February 6 to March 10, her video is an intimate testament to her big-hearted, exuberant personality and another powerful symbol of Ukrainian resistance in the face of Russian aggression.

On February 24, the first day of the war, Tayra chronicles efforts to bandage a Ukrainian soldier’s open head wound.

Two days later, she can be seen ordering colleagues to wrap an injured Russian soldier in a blanket. Calling the young man “Sunshine” – a favourite nickname for many of her patients – she can be seen saying: “Cover him because he is shaking.

“You’re taking care of me,” he asks, wide-eyed in disbelief. “We treat everyone equally,” she replies.

In another clip, a woman asks her: “Are you going to treat the Russians?”

“They will not be as kind to us,” she replies. “But I couldn’t do otherwise. They are prisoners of war.”

Despite this, in keeping with Moscow’s narrative that it is attempting to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, the Putin propaganda machine has portrayed Tayra as a member of the nationalist Azov Battalion. However, AP said it found no such evidence, citing friends and colleagues as saying she had no links to Azov.

The military hospital where she led evacuations of the wounded is not affiliated with the battalion, whose members spent weeks defending a sprawling steel plant.

Tayra’s plight has taken on a new significance as the last defenders in Mariupol are evacuated into Russian territories. Russia has called the departure of more than 1,700 Ukrainian fighters a mass surrender while Ukraine insists they left as their mission was accomplished.

Either way, Ukraine has expressed hope that the fighters can be exchanged for Russian prisoners of war. However, a Russian official has said without evidence that they should not be exchanged but put on trial.