Source: Guardian

It was May 2022 and Oleksandr Ivantsov was trapped. The Russians had seized the city of Mariupol. A small island of territory, the Azovstal steelworks, remained under Ukrainian control. For weeks, Ivantsov and his fellow soldiers had lived in a network of underground shelters, shared with a few civilians. Now this grim subterranean existence was coming to an end.

The complex’s food supplies had run out. Russian bombs fell continuously. There was no prospect of escape. Vladimir Putin had ordered a blockade so tight “that a fly can’t get through”. Under pressure from Kyiv the Ukrainian garrison, composed of 2,500 service personnel, some of them gravely wounded, had reluctantly agreed to surrender. The alternative was certain death.

Or was it? As his battalion prepared to go into Russian captivity, Ivantsov came up with an extraordinary plan. “I decided to hide,” he told Luke Harding. Instead of surrendering he would disappear, and take his chances, in the hope he could somehow make it back to Ukrainian-controlled territory, many miles away. “I put the probability of success at 1 in 1,000,” the 29-year-old admitted. “Everyone thought I was mad.”

Read further