Marina Perederii’s home in the small mining town of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine was her pride and joy.
17 Sadovaya Street was little more than a shell when she and her husband bought it.
They lovingly renovated the house and painted cherry blossoms and doves – symbols of love and well-being – in their bedroom. They built a swimming pool in the garden and a sauna in the basement.
“Everything was planned with so much passion,” she told BBC World Service. But the peace would not last.
In February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Marina’s husband started fighting while she took their children and fled. Before she fled, she captured what she thought could be her last glimpse of their home.
“My dear home, I don’t know whether you will hold out or not. I don’t know if we will ever return here… or if we will survive at all,” she said in a video.
The next time she saw her home was a year later, in February 2023, through the eyes of a Russian soldier, in bodycam footage posted to social media.
A Marine named Fima was in her living room, looking through photos of Marina and her family. “Beautiful,” he said, looking at a photo.
It was a chilling image that made her angry. “I wish I had brought the albums,” says Marina.
Ukraine defended Vuhledar for two and a half years before Russia took control of the city in early October.
During the long battle, in late January 2023, Fima had led a group of soldiers to the outskirts and became involved in heavy fighting on Sadovaya Street. He and some others entered Marina’s house.
As his bodycam footage at home went viral, Fima was hailed as a hero. Official documents show that he was recalled from the front in February 2023 due to a leg wound.
But what the footage did not show was that the Russians were holding a Ukrainian soldier captive in Marina’s basement, who was starving and in urgent need of medical care. His name was Oleksii.
Before the war, Oleksii worked as an IT specialist. When Russia invaded his country, he volunteered to fight and later became a drone operator in Vuhledar. His love for dancing earned him the nickname Dancer.
When the Russians broke through the Ukrainian lines in late January 2023, Oleksii and his comrades tried to withdraw, but some of them, including Oleksii, were shot.
Wounded, they were taken from house to house by Russian soldiers, with Oleksii eventually ending up in the basement of Marina’s house.
He was held captive for almost a month. Russian footage uploaded online shows him wrapped in one of Marina’s carpets.
When the Russian soldiers finally withdrew, they left Oleksii behind. In total, he spent 46 days in Marina’s house, and for most of that time he had little food or water.
Injured, starving and dehydrated, he could not leave the building.
“I was able to find some crumbs on the floor,” he told the BBC World Service from Kiev.
“There was a piece of cracker that a mouse stole from me at night. I hid it, and then the mouse probably stole it because I couldn’t find it.
But hunger was nothing compared to thirst. One day, after the Russians left, Oleksii was almost killed by the desperate need for water.
He tore panels out of the sauna in the hope that there would be water in the pipes. He managed to crack one open and drank some of the liquid inside, but it was antifreeze. Those few sips caused internal burns and were almost fatal.
When Ukrainian forces retook parts of Vuhledar and reached Sadovaya Street in March that year, another video from Marina’s house went viral. It shows ex-New Zealand soldier Kane Te Tai entering Number 17 and finding Oleksii.
“New Zealand, New Zealand, it’s me!” Oleksii shouts at his colleague, who had traveled to fight for Ukraine. Te Tai died in battle just two weeks later.
Oleksii was carried out of the house and taken to safety.
If it had lasted just a few more days, Oleksii says he wouldn’t have made it.
Several other Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are known to have died in and around Sadovaya Street during the Battle of Vuhledar.
“Thank God Oleksii survived. But the fact that people died in my house shocked me,” she says. “There is only death in it.”
The BBC World Service asked the Russian Defense Ministry about Oleksii’s treatment, but received no response.
Six months after Oleksii’s rescue, his Russian captor was praised at home. He was no longer referred to only by his call sign, Fima, but by his first name, Andrei. State television footage shows him reenacting the attack in Vuhledar and sharing his experiences with primary school children, where teachers present him as a hero.
The BBC compared these images with photos of Andrei from hundreds of social media profiles and found a match: the same hairline, the same birthmark on the neck and clear evidence of a leg injury.
A World Service BBC Eye investigation reveals how a family home in eastern Ukraine became the backdrop to three lives caught up in war: the fleeing homeowner, the starving prisoner and the Russian soldier.
Watch on BBC iPlayer (UK only) or on the BBC World Service YouTube channel (outside Great Britain)
His full name is Andrei Efimkin, a 28-year-old born in the Far East of Russia.
We contacted him and asked about the video of Sadovaya Street, especially in which he looked through the photos of Marina’s family. He told us he was playing a “psychological trick” on himself because of the incoming gunfire.
“I picked up the album and started looking at the pictures to distract myself,” he said.
“You know, I actually felt so cold-blooded. To be honest, these thoughts went through my head for a moment – about who lived here.”
But when asked directly about Marina, Efimkin said he did not want to answer any more questions and ended the conversation.
Marina is now in Germany. As time passes, she tries to build a new life, learn a new language and find some work here and there – but she still grieves for her lost home in Vuhledar.
“It’s so difficult. I still see my house in my dreams, it’s always in my head. I still hope that Ukraine wins and everything will be fine, we will come back,” she says.
“My country is there, the sky is mine.”
But back on Sadovaya Street, almost nothing is left of her beloved house, which is once again nothing more than a shell.
It can be recognized from aerial drone footage by a bruise where her swimming pool used to be, standing out against a background of gray rubble.
