In his first televised interview aired Friday, former hostage Ron Krivoi opened up about his time in Hamas captivity and shared chilling details about the abuse suffered by another hostage, Matan Angrest, who remains imprisoned in Gaza, Times of Israel reports.
Krivoi, who holds dual Israeli-Russian citizenship, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival and later freed during the November 2023 ceasefire, reportedly as a gesture by Hamas toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“As a person, I’m a quiet man, I live my life. That’s why I didn’t give interviews, I just continued my life as it was before – that’s what I asked for, to return to my life,” Krivoi told Channel 12 news during the interview.
At the time of the attack, Krivoi was working as a sound technician at the Nova festival, where terrorists unleashed a brutal massacre, killing hundreds, committing atrocities, and dragging dozens into captivity in Gaza.
Initially, Krivoi was confined to an apartment in Gaza. When the building was struck by Israeli forces, he managed to slip away and wandered through the war-torn area for several days before he was recaptured.
“When I was alone, no one saw me. Once someone did – it ended badly. The people who caught me beat me up. It wasn’t simple. I went through something there… When they caught me and brought me back, the people who beat me were ordinary Gazans who took out all their frustration on me,” Krivoi recalled.
Krivoi’s aunt was the first to disclose that he had made a daring escape attempt — without being killed — making him the only known hostage to do so before he was recaptured.
Describing the conditions in the tunnels where he was later held, Krivoi said, “These aren’t the tunnels you see in pictures. We were in something really small, deep underground. There wasn’t even a floor – we were on sand, and the mattresses were all moldy. We were inside a very, very small cage. Honestly, about a meter and a half by a meter and a half, and we had to lie down and rest in it – you couldn’t stand. No height, no toilets, no food. We were five people, we ate one small dish with some canned food.”
Krivoi explained that Matan Angrest arrived the day after him and was visibly traumatized. Angrest had been part of a tank crew attacked by terrorists on October 7, with all his fellow soldiers killed in the assault.
“The interrogations he went through happened while still in Israeli territory – that’s where it started. They already connected him to a car battery on the way and tried to revive him. Using car batteries, they electrocuted him,” Krivoi revealed. “They weren’t able to interrogate him. He probably wasn’t even in a condition to speak because he was badly injured. His injuries were very severe.”
Krivoi added that Angrest faced severe abuse throughout his captivity, enduring brutal mistreatment because of his status as a soldier. Earlier this month, Angrest’s mother said her son had been left permanently disabled from his injuries. She quoted testimonies from other released hostages saying that “he is starving and being held in a little cage in the dark. He doesn’t see the daylight. He is exposed to torture and violence and never sees the Red Cross.”
Speaking about his own experience, Krivoi said, “This is something that even if a person tries to imagine – they’ll never be able to truly understand what it’s like down there.”
Krivoi also reflected on the circumstances of his release, saying, “I know that if I didn’t have Russian citizenship, I could still be in that tunnel with Matan to this day. I’m here because of a miracle – it was Putin who brought me home. If not for him, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Hamas has freed several other hostages holding Russian citizenship as goodwill gestures toward Putin, including Elena Trufanova, who, along with her son Sasha Troufanov and his girlfriend Sapir Cohen, recently visited Putin at the Kremlin.
Just days before Troufanov’s release in February, a deputy Russian foreign minister met with a top Hamas leader in Moscow, pressing the terror group to fulfill its “promises” to free both Troufanov and Maxim Herkin, another Israeli hostage from Ukraine’s Donbas region with Russian family ties.
Earlier this month, Hamas issued a propaganda video showing Herkin and fellow hostage Bar Kupershtein — the first public confirmation that they were still alive since being seized from the Nova festival near Re’im.
Herkin, who was 35 years old when abducted, has a three-year-old daughter and was the main provider for his mother and young brother. He had only gone to the Nova festival after receiving a last-minute invitation from friends, and it was his first experience at a rave.
In February, a senior Hamas leader indicated that Herkin would be among the top priorities for release during the second phase of the hostage deal, intended as a favor to the Russian government. However, after the initial stage of the agreement, negotiations fell apart and Israel resumed its military operations in Gaza.
Today, of the 59 hostages still believed to be alive in Gaza, 24 have confirmed signs of life, including both Herkin and Kupershtein.
{Matzav.com Israel}