KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said 10 Ukrainians held captive in a Russian detention facility for years were released Friday with help from the Vatican.
Part of the group arrived at night by helicopter at Kiev International Airport, which has been closed since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine and is the first time it has welcomed passengers in more than two years. The rest of the group arrived by bus.
Some of the freed civilians were held before the Russian invasion, making it a rare release for people held since Russia illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Among those freed was Nariman Zhelyar, deputy chairman of the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatars' representative body, which was moved to Kiev after Russia occupied the peninsula. Zhelyar had been taken from Crimea, where he had been living since the annexation, a year before the war.
“I was in captivity, but there are many Ukrainians left there,” he said. “We can't leave them there, because the situation is very frightening, both psychologically and physically.”
In the airport's main hall, where pre-war advertisements still hang, former prisoners wrapped in blue and yellow flags were reuniting with their families and making phone calls to those who couldn't make it, some of whom had been separated for years.
“I want to hug my mom. I will be with her soon,” Isabella Baek, the daughter of freed art historian Olena Baek, said in a video call. “I'm so sorry I can't see you.”
For almost six years, Isabella Pev spoke at international conferences and urged foreign ambassadors to help secure the release of her mother, who was being held in the occupied territories of the Donetsk region. Eventually, her efforts paid off.
“Six years of indescribable hell, but I knew I had a country, people who loved me and a daughter,” Olena Pev said.
Among those returning on Friday were two priests. One of them, Bohdan Hereta, was held captive inside a church in the occupied city of Berdyansk in Zaporizhia Krai in 2022.
According to the Ukrainian Prisoners of War (POW) Coordination Headquarters, 3,310 Ukrainians have already been released from Russian prison camps, but thousands of civilians and military personnel remain imprisoned.
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