“The happiest day of my life,” says a freed Ukrainian ex-prisoner
Agence France-Presse spoke to some of the 49 Ukrainian prisoners released by Russia on Friday as part of an exchange between kyiv and Moscow, one of the last areas in which the two countries at war are still cooperating.
This exchange, carried out at an undisclosed location near the border with Belarus, included, for the first time in more than a year, prisoners from the Azov brigade. This unit born from an ultranationalist group has earned a heroic reputation in Ukraine for having fiercely defended Mariupol – a city in the south of the country surrounded and bombed by Moscow’s troops, who finally took it in May 2022 –, making people forget, at least in part, the sulphurous image of its beginnings. Moscow presents them as “Nazis”accusations that the Azov Brigade rejects.
On Friday, some of the newly freed Ukrainians, amid laughter and tears, sang their national anthem. “I can’t believe it! I waited every day and prayed, and finally this day came.”exclaims 28-year-old Tamara Mirochnikova. Among the freed Ukrainian prisoners are 23 women.
This fighter from Azov says she hopes that all her compatriots “I will return from this hell” and so? “No one will ever hear the words “prisoner of war” again”.
The group is then loaded onto a bus and driven to a hospital in northern Ukraine to be examined by doctors. As they boarded, Tamara Mirochnikova was delighted to have spoken to her mother and children about what she was expecting. “for two and a half years”.
“I didn’t know how they were, where they were. Today is the happiest day of my life.”she gets excited.
With a Ukrainian flag draped over her shoulders, she sits next to Tetyana Bouhaï, with whom she had become close during the siege of Mariupol. After their capture, the two women had no contact. They met again for the first time a few days ago, on a train taking them out of Russia.
Finally reunited, Tetyana and Tamara hug and laugh, waving to passersby as the bus passes through the villages. “Our people welcome us”says Tetyana Bouhaï enthusiastically.
Completely happy, he prefers not to insist on his arrest, although he admits to having experienced moments of despair. “But I said to myself: “come on, a little more,” and so on, little by little. (…)I kept hope »she says.
According to Tetyana Bouhaï, Russian prison officials repeatedly told her that no one was waiting for her or wanted her in Ukraine. Far from her country, she had to learn to protect herself.
And he invented a poem dedicated to his sister: “There is no air for us in captivity, we all die on foreign soil. My homeland, I do not want to forget the sacred land, my sister, my father or my mother. Ukraine, please listen to me, only you can save us.”
