Suddenly Joera is there, exchanged by the Russians. But thousands of other Ukrainians are still waiting for their prisoner of war

Nobody in Ukraine knows for sure which prisoners of war will cross the border before they get there. With tense faces, a hedge of Ukrainians is standing along a ring road. Here the released men will arrive in buses.

Thoughs are used along the ring road: « Putin is a dick » and « Ukraine overcomes everything. » The cries die away, the tension is too great. Most people present are the crying near. Some tears in silence. Spouses, parents, sons, daughters wear yellow-blue flags and hold photos of men who got missed in the war.

Suddenly there are horns. The buzzing of bus engines. « Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! », It echoes. Shortly shaved men in prison lumps step out and set in a row. They look tired, overwhelmed, and first get a medical check. The citizens present drove around them with the photos. Does anyone have news about their loved ones?

« Joera! », It sounds panicky. « Joera !!! Where are you? Joera! » A crying young woman with long black hair in jeans makes his way through the crowd. She appears to have just received a text message that her husband is with the prisoners.

The Ukrainian soldier Joera meets his wife Olena on Saturday.

Photo Kostyantyn Chernichkin

The prison exchange is the only tangible result of the peace talks announced by Moscow Bombastic and subsequently half -hearted talks, in mid -May in Istanbul. In the past three days, Ukraine and Russia exchanged a total of two thousand prisoners.

In the meantime, Peace is only getting further away: Moscow carried out heavy bombing on Kyiv and other cities on Friday and Saturday night. On Saturday night, Russia sent 69 cruise missiles and more than two hundred Kamikazedrones, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Several houses and flats were damaged. At least four civilians died, a few dozen were injured.

Even President Donald Trump would have admitted last week that Russia is not really interested in peace. Trump so far proud that the Kremlin only needed friendly words from Washington to stop the destruction of Ukraine.

Ukraine said this month that Russia is estimated to hold eight thousand prisoners of war. There are no official figures, both warring parties keep the numbers secret. President VolodyMyr Zensky announced at the beginning of this year that tens of thousands of soldiers are missing.

In recent years, exchanging prisoners and bodies was the only thing that Russia and Ukraine were still talking about. So far, more than 5,700 prisoners of war have returned, exchange in 65 times. So most people present are not waiting again – but the hope remains on a well -known few eyes in the crowd. Or a paper news.

Radiant

Olena (36) is called the woman who got the text message. She comes from the Vynnitsja region. She later tells this, calmly, radiant, after she finally saw her husband. At least six months ago, her Joera was missing at the heavily fought city of Pokrovsk, in the east.

In recent months, she was told through another released that Joera had been in the barrack in a Russian prisoner of war camp. That he was injured in his legs. And now he is here. « He has become so thin, » says Olena. « But more important is that he is at home. I’m going to make fried eggs for him with Salo. » A Ukrainian delicacy from Varkensvet.

After his medical check, Olena is at Joera. He has received new shoes and clothing. Olena has long pastel pink nails and strokes her thumb over his hand. She pushes his jacket aside by his wrist and sees scratches with kninkles. She looks at him questioningly. He apologetically shrugs.

It is one of the few happy stories of the day. Seriously, the released people look at the hundreds of photos that are presented to them. Not seen, they nod. Not seen. It is the only way to obtain information about prisoners. Hoping for the memory of other former prisoners. Hoping that someone still looks like his photo.

A girl with dark brown hair in a braid has red -ridge eyes. In her arms she wears a portrait of a handsome young man with a beard, smiling behind the wheel. While the procession passes by, she shakes her head with tears in her eyes. Her Jaroslav is not there. Since July he has been missing without any message.

Somewhere in the crowd a mother and daughter burst into tears. Two released soldiers say father Vitaly have seen them in prison alive. They had not heard anything about him for a year.

The presence of journalists here is under conditions: no questions about a person’s role in the army, no questions about torture, no long interviews that cost a lot of energy. No Russian talking: that can be shocked by people who have just got out of captivity. « And remember that the liberated defenders have lived in an information cacus, without access to objective information. Keep that in mind, » said the army spokesperson.

A report from the UN Human Rights Mission in Ukraine showed last year that 95 percent of the prisoners of war held in Russia is subject to torture. This practice is « widespread and systematic, » said the head of the mission, Daniel Bell. Prisoners of war report, among other things, to be beaten with metal bars, to be elekkrocuted.

The torture starts with the first interrogations. In 2022, an former prisoner, for example NRC From that he got boiling hot soup every day, and only a few minutes to eat it. Unlike Ukraine, Russia does not allow observation missions of the Red Cross in his prisons.

Criminal

Elmira Baranov stands in the crowd with a large photo of her son, hoping to catch news about where he is trapped. She has light brown hair and green eyes and is Crimow tatar.

The Crimean tatars were massively deported from their birthplace in 1944, by order of Soviet dictator Jozef Stalin. Tens of thousands of them did not survive this. Elmira grew up in exile, in Uzbekistan. In the 1980s and especially after the independence of Ukraine in 1991, many of them were able to repatriate to Crimea.

Most Crimea tatars have never forgiven this, and support fierce Ukraine. Russia does not trust them and suppresses Crimean culture and organizations. The men in particular are arrested without too much reason.

Elmira’s family already fled the Russian occupation of the Crimea in 2016. Her son Ernest has big brown eyes, is only 23 and missing since the summer of 2022. That fall she heard from a released prisoner from Marioepol that he saw her ‘Ernie’ in a notorious prison in the occupied Makiivka, in Donetsk. Since then she has not received any news about him anymore.

But she doesn’t give up. « I have been instructed to stay calm and wait for two years. Then they say: » There are so many guys missing, why do you think your son is special? We are working on everyone’s return.  » Yes, I am not the only one, but for me he is the only one.

Two blonde young people in black sweaters lean against a fence and stare in front of them. Volodyymyr (25) and his sister Polina (16) hold different photos of the same man: their father Vitaly. Have they not had news? « Yes, we are very happy, » Polina says calmly, still expressionless. « Someone has recognized our father, » says Volodymyr. He became missing in mid -January in fighting in the Loehansk region. It is known as one of the places in the east of Ukraine where the most fought. But Vitaly was also defending with other notorious sieges: at Bachmoet, at Avdiivka.

« Now we know that he is still alive, » says Polina. With such a message, the family can go to the coordinating staff of the armed forces and submit a request to register him as a prisoner of war. With that he can get on the list and can ask Ukraine for his exchange. If the person who recognized their father was not mistaken, at least. To be sure, they also come back to the next prison exchange with the same question: Has anyone seen this man?

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