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Ukrainian POW returns from 7-year Russian imprisonment with his cat
Ukrainian serviceman Stanislav Panchenko, who returned from Russian captivity during a prisoner exchange on 14 August, came home with a feline companion – his cat Myshko, Suspilne Poltava reported.
Panchenko joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2017 at age 18. He was captured by Russian forces in 2019 and spent seven years in captivity. Initially held at Donetsk Pre-trial Detention Center No. 5, he was later transferred to Colony 32 following a “trial.” Russian authorities accused him of “terrorism” and “illegal seizure of power,” sentencing him to 17 years imprisonment.
The soldier found the cat while serving his sentence in the penal colony. According to Panchenko’s mother, her son formed a bond with the animal during his imprisonment.
“He had a cat in the colony, where he was held. Whether someone brought it to him, or where he got it, or found it somewhere on the colony grounds while it was still small. But he brought it home with him,” the woman told reporters. “He said: ‘When you come – take the cat, because if I lose it, it will be unpleasant.'”
Panchenko described how the cat came to live in the prison barracks. “I couldn’t leave Myshko – in the colony he faced the fate of a stray. And this was already our, you could say, domestic cat. This kitten was brought to our barracks by our ‘head of household’ when it was tiny. The kitten looked to be about two weeks old,” he said.
“If this kitten had been ‘deported’ beyond the fence, it wouldn’t have survived on its own. In general, the ‘head of household’ took pity on it. And we nursed it – fed it, it slept with us,” the former prisoner explained.
Panchenko spent his captivity undergoing what he called rehabilitation, staying only three days in a hospital upon return. He described Myshko as intelligent and gentle.
The 14 August prisoner exchange freed 33 defenders and 51 civilians from Russian captivity, according to Ukrainian authorities. The released Ukrainians had been detained in temporarily occupied territories before the full-scale invasion and illegally sentenced to lengthy prison terms ranging from 10 to 18 years. One of the released prisoners had been held for 4,013 days, captured in Donetsk Oblast in 2014.