In two days, Ukraine will enter its third year of full-scale war with Russia. In twenty-four months, the Russian invasion left tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers dead and injured. Several thousand soldiers were also taken prisoner. In two years, 3,315 captive Ukrainian soldiers were able to return to their country, according to kyiv. A drop in the ocean for families waiting for their loved ones to return.
5 mins
From our special correspondent in kyiv,
Since his flight from Melitopol, occupied by the Russia, Maria Tchernykina rents an apartment in a dormitory town in the Ukrainian capital. She raised four children there, aged 5 to 11, her two and those of her brother Oleh Nechaiev. The latter was captured by the Russians in Mariupol in April 2022. His wife is lying in one of the rooms, she has metastatic cancer, but Oleh, who was a driver in the naval forces, is not aware of the state of health of his wife because the illness had broken out after he was taken prisoner, like 250 other members of his battalion. To date, only around twenty of them have been able to return to the country.
“Why, after two years, has he still not been traded? I do not know “, her sister Maria Tchernykina laments in her kitchen. “ My brother is an ordinary sailor, he was a driver. What can they get from him? I don’t know why he’s still there. His wife doesn’t have time to wait. My dream is for my brother to come back while she is still alive. »
The young woman moves heaven and earth to try to get her brother included on the priority list of prisoners to be exchanged: letters to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, to the director of military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov, to the rights defender, visits to associations helping families of prisoners. She even met the apostolic nuncio. No result. She also scours Russian social networks in search of the slightest clue, the slightest photo, contacts prisoners who have returned to the country and collects a few scraps of information, such as this voice message received from an exchanged soldier, who tells her that he spent two days in the same cell as his brother in December 2022. “ He was taken to Kursk, like us, for an exchange, but on the 31st, when we were called up, he was the only one to stay in the cell. » The information was confirmed to him by a second former prisoner of war. Since then, the family has had no news. “ The guys don’t give many details about the conditions of detention, either because they don’t have the right or so as not to worry us. », Maria advances.
Only 160 civilians returned from Russia in two years
Olena Dobycha’s husband, Serhi, 41, was able to return from captivity on January 3. He was taken prisoner in April 2022, after defending the huge Illitch metallurgical factory in Mariupol. Founder of Polygon 56 Berdiansk, named after the town where she settled in 2014 after fleeing Donetsk and which she had to abandon due to the Russian occupation of part of the Zaporizhia region, Olena Dobycha comes helps families of Ukrainian prisoners of war and welcomes those who are released. “ When they return, she says, they are transparent, they have lost so much weight. My husband weighed 110 kg but when he came back he was less than 60 kg. He has undergone several operations since his return and is still undergoing treatment. “It estimates the number of military prisoners in Russia at more than 20,000.” At the rate the prisoner exchanges are taking place, we still have ten years left. »
If the families of prisoners often have the feeling of being little heard by the authorities, the situation of civilians held in Russia is even more delicate. During the last exchange of prisoners, at the beginning of February, no civilians were included. The Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize, has a list of 1,600 names of people kidnapped from the occupied Ukrainian territories and imprisoned in Russia. A figure that is largely underestimated, according to Mykhailo Savva, member of the association’s expert council, who puts forward the figure of 7,000 civilians detained in Russia. “ The Russian authorities do not allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the places where these civilians are detained. Our association counted 57 and that’s without counting unofficial places of detention. » In two years, only 160 people have been brought back from Russia, according to Mykhailo Savva, who regrets the authorities’ lack of strategy to accelerate the return of civilian prisoners to Ukraine.
In kyiv, Maria Tchernykina is preparing to demonstrate on Sunday with the other families of detainees. She had posters made with her brother’s photo and calls for his release, in English, German and Ukrainian. The worry does not leave her: “ there are people who have been in captivity in Russia since 2014. During the last exchange, there was a man who had been there since 2015. In fourteen months, from our battalion, there is only one who is go home », sighs the young mother, “ we have no guarantee that he will return alive ».