‘Super Mario,’ the Spanish retiree who moved to Ukraine and disappeared 40 months ago in Russian prisons

Ukrainians call him Mario because Mariano is a strange name for them, difficult to remember in a Slavic country. But in Ukraine, they still remember him as “Super Mario,” as he was dubbed by KHPG, a Kharkiv-based human rights NGO that’s been tracking him. Mariano García Calatayud is a retiree from Carlet, a small town in Spain’s Mediterranean Valencia region, who decided to move to Ukraine in 2014. On March 19, 2022, three weeks after the Russian invasion began, the Russian security services arrested him in the occupied city of Kherson. Almost 40 months later, his family and friends do not know what has become of him.

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