Ukrainian civilian freed in prisoner swap tells of ‘constant cruelty’

Since his release from a Russian prison, DMYTRO KhYLIUK was barely outside the phone.

The Russian forces detained the Ukrainian journalist in the first days of their extensive invasion. Three and a half years later, he was released in a prisoner’s exchange, an eight civilian was released in a sudden step.

While Russia and Ukraine have previously exchanged prisoners of the military war, it is very rare for Russia to launch Ukrainian civilians.

DMYTRO was caught feverish on everything he missed. But he also connects the families of every Ukrainian who met in captivity: He memorized all their names and all the details.

He knows that for some, his call may be the first assertion that their relative is alive.

There were celebrations here last month when DMYTRO was returned from Russia in a group of 146 Ukrainian.

A crowd of blue and yellow national flags came out, as they chanted while the buses carrying liberated men wandering in their centuries.

Most of them were on board the soldiers with the steeled cheeks, defeat after their years behind bars.

The officials will not say exactly how they have regained the eight Ukrainian civilians on the same stock exchange, but rather it is involved in sending it in return, “People were Russia interested.”

One of the sources said that these residents of the Kursk region of Russia were evacuated when the Ukrainian forces launched their incursion in 2024.

It was the first phone call to DMYTRO that extends from the bus to a crowd, is to tell his mother that it is free. Both his parents are the elderly and a machine, and his greatest fear did not see them again.

“The most difficult is not to know when you are allowed to return. You can be released the next day or staying a prisoner for 10 years. No one knows how long.”

We met DMYTRO shortly after his release while he was recovering at Kyiv Hospital.

Details that he shared from his chilling family.

He said: “They grabbed us and dragged them literally to prison and on the road who struck us with rubber rollers screaming with things like,” How many people did you kill? “

He was detained in multiple facilities and his account is in harmony with many others who have heard it over the years.

“Sometimes, they allowed the guard to remove his wheel so that he could bite. The cruelty was really horrific and was fixed.”

He told me that he was bitten and left bleeding. “I felt very tense that I felt the pain after only 20 minutes.”

The journalist has never been accused of any crime.

Physically in the first year it was the most difficult. “We were starving. We got very little food for a long time.” It was more than 20 kg in the first few months, causing talismans to dizzy. But the soldiers, who were held with them, were treated much worse.

“They called them interrogation, and they were beaten and tortured with electric shock.”

He heard their pain and saw bruises.

The journalist’s family home is a world far from all, in the beautiful village of Kozarovychi outside KYIV.

It is a peaceful feeling, regardless of air raids, with poultry gardens, BlackBerry shrubs and fruit trees.

But the rear wall of the DMYTRO house still has shrapnel -torn pieces and the grass was repaired only as the Russian forces had stopped a tank.

In 2022, at the beginning of their invasion on a large scale when the Russians were advancing in Kiev, he took over the village.

A few days later, when DMYTRO and his father tried, Vasyl check the damage to their home, they were arrested.

The Russian forces forced both men on the ground, binding and eye gangs, and they walked in captivity. The couple now knows that they were held in a cellar below the local warehouses, where the Russians made their base.

Men were transferred several times with the increase in the number of civilian detainees.

Vasil was eventually released, but for several months he was afraid of his son.

The retired tells me: “I didn’t know where he was transferred and I was afraid,” the retired tells me. “There were gunshots at night. One man was moved outside, then a bullet was fired. It no longer. I still don’t know the fate of all the people who were there.”

Then he and his wife got a small scrap of paper from the Russian prison.

“I am alive, I am well. Everything is fine,” Dimitro wrote to them both, Ukrainian. They will get only one note in its entire time in captivity.

Other families had no news at all.

Throughout Ukraine, officials say more than 16,000 civilians are currently missing. So far, they put only a small part of them in Russian prisons.

Moscow does not publish lists because the detention of civilians without reason is illegal. But this makes it very complicated.

Forty -three men are still being held from the area surrounding the village of Dmytro alone.

It includes Volodymyr Lobbrets, held at the same time, which was held on the same lower floors and then moved to Russia. He now has a new grandson that he has never met and a family you miss.

“It is really difficult. We are smiling, yes, thank God, I have a new grandson.” “But I had a husband – and now I do not.”

“The government says it will not exchange our relatives to the Russian soldiers, so we left waiting for the fourth year in a row until there is some way to restore them.”

Vera is very frustrated. But he is the Secretary of Grievances in Ukraine in Human Rights.

DMYTRO LUBINTS describes dealing with Russia as a chess to play: You adhere to all rules, only for your opponent to stand up, withdraw boxing gloves and intensify you.

The problem is that Ukraine cannot reach. She does not have a group of Russian civilian prisoners because it is against war rules under the Geneva Convention. Sending Russian soldiers again in exchange for Ukrainian civilians will be a disaster.

“The next day, Russia will take thousands of civilians as hostages in the occupied territories, only to exchange its soldiers,” notes the Secretary of Grievances. “So Russia acquires our civilians and there is no legal mechanism to return them.”

There was one trade that included Ukrainian citizens who were detained and sentenced here to cooperate with the enemy: a group – it was said to be volunteers – that was replaced by Ukrainian civilians held in Russia.

It is not clear if this has been repeated.

For the DMYTRO family, almost long and painful waiting ended. They will join them in the village as soon as the hospital announces that it is suitable again.

His mother, Halina, slips that she has a long list of jobs for her only son – fix all the damage to the Russians.

In fact, she can barely mention his name without crying.

“I cannot control my feelings,” she told me crying. “When Dima called, he told me to be calm. He returned to Ukraine and I shouldn’t cry anymore. But we haven’t seen our son for three and a half years!”

DMYTRO takes it slowly, because the return here requires some modification.

He says: “I knew that the war was still continuing, but not that they were bombing Kiev drones and that was unexpected and sad.” “So the trees are the same, and the buildings are the same. But you understand that this is a different country. You are in a different fact.”

Participated in additional reports by Mariana Mattechuk and Cristina Falk