Ten Ukrainian POWs return home after being held for years by Russia
Kyiv International Airport, which had been closed since the war began, was specially opened up to welcome the ten, some of whom flew in by helicopter whilst others arrived by bus.
Some of those released had been captured before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
It is rare for individuals detained after 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea, to be released but the Vatican is known to have been involved in securing their freedom.
Two of the freed, Ivan Levytskyi and Bohdan Geleta, were monks. Levytskyi had been detained in 2022 inside his church in the occupied city of Berdiansk in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Amongst those freed was Nariman Dzhelyal the deputy head of the Mejlis, a representative body for the Tatars community that live in Crimea. The body relocated to Kyiv after Russia seized the peninsula. Dzhelyal, who continued to live in Crimea despite the annexation, was seized one year before the war.
“I was in captivity, where many Ukrainians remain,” he said. “We cannot leave them there, because the conditions, both psychological and physical, are very frightening there.”
Nariman Dzhelyal, deputy head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, center, in Kyiv airport, Ukraine, Saturday, June 29, 2024. Alex Babenko/Copyright 2023 The AP. All rights reserved.
In the main hall of the airport, where pre-war advertisements still hang, former prisoners wrapped in blue and yellow flags reunited with their families and called those who couldn’t be there.
“I really want to hug you. I’ll be with you soon, Mommy,” said Isabella Pekh, the daughter of freed art historian Olena Pekh, said over a video call. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t meet you.”
Olena Pekh, researcher at Horlivka Art Museum, cries while she speaks to her daughter via videosignal in Kyiv airport, Ukraine, Saturday, June 29, 2024. Alex Babenko/Copyright 2023 The AP. All rights reserved.
Isabella Pekh's mother was detained in the occupied part of the Donetsk region. For nearly six years, Isabella spoke at international conferences and appealed to foreign ambassadors for help in freeing her mother. Eventually, her efforts succeeded.
“It was six years of hell that words cannot describe. But I knew I had my homeland, I had people who loved me, I had my daughter,” Olena Pekh said.
Priest Bohdan Heleta, left, who was detained inside his own church in the occupied city of Berdiansk in the Zaporizhzhia region in 2022, speaks to his friend in Kyiv airport, Alex Babenko/Copyright 2023 The AP. All rights reserved.
According to Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 3,310 Ukrainians have so far been released from Russian captivity.
But many thousands of Ukrainians, both civilians and military personnel, remain imprisoned.