Since the spring of 2022, musicians from military bands stationed in Mariupol have been held in Russian captivity alongside the city’s defenders. Among them are members of the bands of the 36th Marine Brigade, the 12th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, and the 56th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
We have previously written about Ukrainian musicians held in Russian captivity. Today, we take a closer look at the Marine Corps band.
In December 2021, the 36th Marine Brigade, previously stationed in Mykolaiv, was transferred to Mariupol as part of a scheduled rotation. The band members, who had toured extensively and participated in numerous competitions, were preparing for concerts planned for 2022 including international performances in the United States, Turkey, and Romania.
In the early days of the full-scale invasion, at the end of February 2022, the musicians joined the military in taking up positions at the Illich Steel Plant. After a month and a half of defending Mariupol, they surrendered to Russian forces on April 12, following an order aimed at preserving the lives of personnel. At that time, 19 musicians from the Marine Corps band were at the plant. One additional band member is still considered missing.
As of mid-May 2025, twelve musicians from the band of the 36th Marine Brigade remain in Russian captivity.
Over the past three years, six band members have returned alive: one was released in a prisoner exchange in 2022, one in 2023, two in 2024, and another two in the spring of 2025. Sviatoslav Saltykov, a 22-year-old saxophonist in the band, was tortured to death by Russian forces in captivity in September 2022. His body, bearing clear signs of torture, was returned to Ukraine in April 2023.
Music in Captivity
The families of the captured military musicians have come together to form the organization Music in Captivity. It was founded at the end of 2023 by Tetiana Savenetska, the sister of the band’s saxophonist, Rostyslav Bohutskyi, who was freed from captivity in April of this year. Tetiana is also a co-founder of the association Strength of the Marine Corps, which brings together the families of all captured marines.
The main goal of the organization is to inform the international community about Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian prisoners of war. In 2024, representatives of the organization had an audience with the Pope, and in February 2025, they spoke at the European Parliament in Brussels during the “Faces of Russian Captivity” conference.
“We spoke about the inhumane conditions in which Ukrainian prisoners are being held, showed photos of those who were tortured in captivity, and photos of the men returning bearing signs of physical abuse. Our audience was deeply shocked by what they saw. Some even asked whether the images were photoshopped — people couldn’t believe something like this could be real”, Tetiana says.
The musicians still in captivity are held in various penal colonies. Their families learn of their whereabouts only through fellow servicemen who were released and happened to encounter them in Russian prisons.
“It’s very hard for the wives of the prisoners. In our community, there’s more than one case like this: a woman gave birth in the winter of 2021, her husband picked them up from the maternity hospital and then left for a rotation in Mariupol. From there he was taken into Russian captivity, which has now lasted over three years. These women try, at least through photographs, to show their children what their father looks like, to explain to a child who has never seen their dad where he has been for four years now, and what is happening to him”, says Tetiana.
According to testimonies from those released from captivity, all prisoners are subjected to physical and psychological abuse by the Russians. For the musicians, Tetiana says, there is an additional form of torture: “They torment musicians with music forcing them to sing Russian songs or the national anthem of the Russian Federation for hours on end”.
The organization Music in Captivity is working on a resolution calling on European countries to make every effort to secure the release of the musicians held in captivity. According to its founder, the international community has expressed support for the prisoners’ families, but it cannot guarantee that their demands will be met, as Russia does not comply with international law.
The activist states, “We absolutely have the strength to keep fighting for our prisoners until the end. The most important thing is that they hold on over there”.
“I Told Everyone I Would Survive”: The Story of a Musician Freed from Russian Captivity
After spending two and a half years in captivity, Serhii Smyrnov, a major and the head of the Marine Corps band, returned home on September 14 in 2024, as part of a prisoner exchange.
Serhii has been involved in music since childhood: he studied button accordion and saxophone at music school, continued his education in the wind instruments department of the Chernihiv Music College, and later trained as a military band conductor at the National Academy of Ground Forces. In 2016, he began working with the band of the 36th Marine Brigade, where he collaborated with fellow musicians to create arrangements for their ensemble, among other responsibilities. Serhii is currently undergoing rehabilitation after his time in captivity.
We spoke with Serhii about his experience, his attitude toward Russian culture, and life after captivity. The following text is his own.
The Defense of Mariupol
We came under heavy fire on the very first day of the full-scale war. The rear command post was bombed, and we happened to be there at the time. It’s a miracle we survived, the strike hit about 40 meters from our barracks. Around February 27, we, the musicians, along with the soldiers, took up positions at the Illich Steel Plant.
There was no question of evacuating the orchestra members from Mariupol, as we had taken the military oath. Only the women from the brigade, those in rear positions, were allowed to be sent to the permanent deployment point. At the same time, a musician isn’t a role meant to carry out combat missions. During the war, musicians from military bands could serve as part of funeral teams or be involved in combat as infantrymen.
For as long as it was possible to leave the plant, we were involved in delivering food and ammunition. Another regular duty for the musicians was manning observation posts. In addition, we helped at the hospital as there were people there, including amputees, who needed constant care.
In April, we received an order to save the lives of our personnel. We decided to try and break through because no one wanted to surrender. The first attempt was very difficult. The Russians were just destroying our column, and we lost contact with the commander. As a result, many were killed, and we had to turn back. The second attempt was even harder. This time, we decided not to move as a single column but to split into smaller groups. But the Russians were already waiting for us — they opened heavy fire.
What’s important is that, after receiving the order, we didn’t give up. We still made two attempts to break through. Unfortunately, both were unsuccessful.
Captivity. Transporting Prisoners
First, we were brought to Sartana, a village in the temporarily occupied Donetsk region. Then we spent several days in Olenivka. From there, officers were taken for interrogation in Donetsk, and I was among them. When they move prisoners, they divide them into different groups each time and send them to separate locations. Some of us, including me, were taken further into Russia, first to Taganrog, then to the Bryansk region, where I stayed for a year. Later, I was transferred to the Vladimir region, and then to the Republic of Mordovia. I spent the most time in Mordovia which is a year and three months.
I didn’t see any of my fellow musicians. We were sent to different colonies. Whenever I was moved, I tried to find out at least something about them, where they were, whether they had been in the same places I was taken to, but no one told me anything.
The Russians hate Ukrainian officers, they treat them with extreme cruelty.
As for the musicians, they constantly exploit them, mock them, lock them in barns, and organize concerts there.
They tell you what to sing, and if you don’t learn it, they beat you until you do what they want. I refused to take part in that. They told me, “You’re a conductor, go ahead and sing”. I replied that I couldn’t, because I was an orchestra director, not a singer. They beat me, and that was the end of it. This was just my personal experience, I refused to let them use me as a musician. But there were also things they forced absolutely everyone to do, like singing the shitty Russian anthem, they beat you until you sang it.
Of all the places I was taken during the transport, the most brutal treatment was in Taganrog and Mordovia. Sometimes they beat me several times a day. Other times, days would pass without beatings; it depended on which guards were on duty. Some simply didn’t want to deal with us: they asked a few questions as instructed, but didn’t touch us. Beatings and abuse are different things. Sometimes, they beat us on the genitals for over an hour.
Living Conditions in Prison Cells
For two and a half years, I was held in various cells, some for two people, others for six, eight, even fourteen. I can’t say we were given anything resembling real living conditions. For the most part, they were decommissioning old pre-trial detention centers and cramming us into them. Half the cell would be covered in mold, and sometimes there were no windows at all…
When inspections came, they might improve the conditions temporarily, although I only ever heard of the Red Cross, I never saw any of their representatives. I know that some of the other guys were visited by the Red Cross. During those visits, they were given things like toothpaste. But it was all just for show, to make a video about how they “take care of us”. There are two thousand prisoners in that detention center, and they’d hand out toothpaste to maybe 50 of them.
We ate oats with husks, about four spoonfuls per meal. They also gave us some bread and water. When inspections came, we might even get a little meat but that never lasted long. Mostly, we were given millet, semolina, and pearl barley. And there was some kind of mixed porridge, animal feed, really, full of garbage. You could even find a piece of asphalt in it.
In the Mordovian prison, there was a standing regime meaning you had to stand all day. Only after six months were we allowed to sit briefly after meals. After half an hour of sitting, we were back to standing for the rest of the day.
In the prisons I was in before Mordovia, there were at least some medical checkups. Of course, they didn’t actually treat anything, but they might give you a few pills. In Mordovia, they only beat me. There was a deranged doctor there who “treated” all the prisoners with a taser. Now our journalists are trying to identify him based on testimonies from those who made it back. I shared a cell with a 54-year-old man who had heart problems. He went to see that doctor. The doctor tased him, then kicked him in the face and said, “You’re not going to die, so thank me for that”. And that’s just one of thousands of cases. Eventually, we were banned from seeing any doctor at all.
During the first six months of captivity, your body somehow runs on its old reserves. But after a year, it’s like your body merely exists, you have no strength left.
When we were taken out for walks, I’d be out of breath after just a few steps. After captivity, I could barely walk up to the second floor.
I tried to save myself by doing physical exercise. I had to do it without being seen, because most of the guards would beat you for any activity — they wanted us to become completely atrophied. There was a surveillance camera on the wall. I’d worked with that kind of equipment before and knew exactly where each camera’s blind spot was. So, I tried to hide and do at least some minimal exercise. When you’re constantly being beaten, sports become a way to recover. You get beaten, then you warm up a little just so you can endure it again tomorrow. That’s how you survive.
Communication with Family
For two and a half years, I was never allowed to call home. The only communication I was permitted was through letters, and I sincerely hoped they would reach my family. I wrote three of them. Each letter had to follow a strict template. In one of them, I deviated slightly, hinting that I had read a letter from my wife. I later assumed it wouldn’t be sent. That letter arrived a few months later after I returned from captivity. In other words, my wife received my letters only after I had come back.
During my entire captivity, I received just two letters from home. I burst into tears when they came. When you find out that your son is already talking, running, jumping, and the last time you saw him, he was just a six-month-old baby, a father’s heart breaks. I received those letters a few months before the exchange, which means I hadn’t heard from home in over two years. After I returned, I told my wife what I remembered from the letter, and we realized it had been written about a year and a half before I received it. That’s when I found out she had been writing letters every month.
Russian Propaganda and Psychological Pressure
We were isolated from all reliable news, from any information at all. We told time by the sun or by the guards’ shift changes. We just tried to keep track of the dates in our heads. They told us that Odesa, Mykolaiv, and other Ukrainian cities had long since been taken over by Russia.
I didn’t believe the lies they were telling. Of course, I understood that things weren’t going well in Ukraine because if they were, I wouldn’t have been in captivity. But I knew their stories were just propaganda.
No one returns from captivity healthy. Physical health takes a hit, there’s no doubt about it, but mental health suffers too.
The only question is how deeply someone comes back damaged. Most people are psychologically broken after captivity.
You don’t know when you’ll be released. They transport you telling you it’s for an exchange, but it’s just another prisoner transfer. When they bring you to a new location, they “receive” you there: they beat you with whatever they can find and set dogs on you… People’s psyches break down.
People die in captivity all the time: literally, corpses are taken out of their cells every day. And you, no matter how mentally prepared you are, sit in a cell with others. Many of them are in despair, saying they can’t take it anymore but I kept telling everyone that I would survive. Had I gone through all that for nothing? In Mariupol, I could have died a thousand times, so should I die here now? No. I’m going back home.
The negative thoughts don’t go away. But I tried to detach myself. I would count in my head, plan things, sing Ukrainian songs. You survive there only in your thoughts. It’s not enough to tell yourself that your family is waiting for you, you have to believe it. And to believe it, you have to drill those thoughts into your head every single day.
Back in 2022, when we were already in captivity, those damned inhumans declared me dead, they posted a photo of my documents online and claimed I had died. Can you imagine the psychological pressure that put on my family? My wife didn’t believe it. She said it couldn’t be true. And she held on to that belief, kept searching for information, and waited.
On Russian Music and Art
During my time in captivity, there were about four months when we were allowed to read books. You considered yourself very lucky if you came across an American detective novel, because most of the books there were in Russian. To me, it’s all just garbage.
There is such a wide variety of quality music and literature in the world today. I don’t understand why people still cling to Russian works, limit themselves to them, and refuse to explore a much broader cultural landscape.
Russia has always claimed that its culture is “great”, and people become accustomed to these imposed narratives and continue to see it that way. But when you look at it in a broader context, that’s simply not the case.
Our task now is to promote our own culture. Some people remain deeply entrenched in their views, and it’s nearly impossible to change their minds. I believe we should just focus on our work and not waste energy on them.
How to Talk to People Who Have Survived Captivity
I see captivity as an experience. Yes, a negative one, but it’s something I’ve lived through. I won’t erase it from my life, it will stay with me forever. You have to live through it and come to terms with it. It’s a deeply personal matter; everyone processes this experience in their own way.
When you begin a conversation with someone who has survived captivity, the best thing to do right away is to ask directly and openly: What can we talk about, and what is off-limits? This way, the person understands from the outset what direction the conversation will take.
If someone who has been in captivity isn’t ready to talk, don’t try to make them open up because that would only retraumatize them.
In the first months after captivity, I got tired very quickly. I could only sleep for about three hours a day, and I could stay mentally alert for maybe an hour at most. Now, my body is gradually recovering, so it’s become a little easier to keep up with the pace of life I enjoy.
Twelve of my bandmates are still in captivity. Over these three years, six of us have returned alive but Slava Saltykov, our saxophonist, was tortured to death in captivity by those bastards. I’m always glad when prisoner exchanges happen, but I’m truly happy only when my musicians come back. That’s when I feel a bit of relief. I was there, I know what they’re going through. I’m doing everything I can for them here. We’re working in Kyiv with the Military Music Department of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which helps raise awareness of our situation around the world. There are also several other organizations I can’t name. This work is ongoing. I’ll only be able to live in peace once all my bandmates are home.
Read also: