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bbcA Ukrainian official told the BBC they expect a New Year’s prisoner swap with Russia to happen “any day”, although the arrangements could fall apart at the last minute.
Petro Yatsenko of Ukraine’s Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said negotiations with Moscow on prisoner exchanges have become more difficult in recent months since Russian forces began making significant progress along the war line. forehead.
In 2024 there were only 10 exchanges, the lowest number since the full-scale invasion began. Ukraine does not publish the number of prisoners of war held by Russia, but the total is believed to exceed 8,000.
Russia has made significant progress on the battlefield this year, raising fears that the number of captured Ukrainians is rising.
One of those who returned home in the last exchange, in September 2024, is Ukrainian sailor Andriy Turas. In an apartment in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, Andriy and his wife Lena tell me the extraordinary story of their ordeal. Both were captured while defending the city of Mariupol in 2022.
“They gave us lectures about how Ukraine never existed,” Lena, a combat medic, says of her Russian captors. “They tried to exterminate our Ukrainian identity in our heads.”
Lena was released after two weeks of captivity. But the psychological scars of what he experienced in a Russian prisoner-of-war facility remain. “We heard screams constantly, we knew that the men (in our unit) were being tortured,” he says.
“They beat us mercilessly, with their fists, sticks, hammers or anything they could find,” says Andriy. “They stripped us naked in the cold and forced us to crawl on the asphalt. They broke our legs and left us terrified and frozen.”
“The food was horrible: sour cabbage and spoiled fish heads. It’s just a nightmare,” says the sailor. “It’s like waking up from a bad dream in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and terrified.”
Andriy’s imprisonment lasted much longer than his wife’s: two and a half years.
Upon being released in the prisoner exchange three months ago, Andriy met his two-year-old son León for the first time. When the couple was captured by Russian forces, Lena did not know she was pregnant.
“When I found out I was pregnant I just cried, first with happiness, but then with sadness, because I couldn’t tell my husband.”
“I wrote him letters constantly, telling him that he would finally have the child he had wanted for so long,” Lena says, her eyes shining. “But he didn’t receive a single letter.”
I ask Andriy how he felt meeting his son for the first time. “I thought I was the happiest person in the world,” he says, smiling.
While the BBC cannot independently verify everything Lena and Andriy told us, their accounts are corroborated by international organisations, which have interviewed hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The UN says Russia subjects Ukrainian prisoners to “widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment… including severe beatings, electric shocks, sexual violence, asphyxiation, prolonged stress positions, forced excessive exercise, sleep deprivation, drills execution, threats of violence and humiliation”. “
In a statement to the BBC, the Russian Embassy in London said: “The allegations you have described are patently false. The captured Ukrainian militants are treated humanely and in full compliance with the provisions of the relevant Russian legislation and the Geneva Convention. “They are provided with good quality food, accommodation, medical assistance, religious and intellectual nourishment.”
Andriy is undergoing rehabilitation in a medical center in Lviv. But he still has time to enjoy the holidays with his wife and son. It is the first Christmas that the Turas family spends together and the best gift for little León is having dad at home.
But many Ukrainians are still desperately waiting for news of their loved ones. In central kyiv, relatives and activists gather for a special Christmas rally to call for the release of Ukrainian prisoners.
They stand for hours in the biting cold, lined up on one of the capital’s main streets, while passing motorists honk their horns in a deafening cacophony of solidarity.
“We are hoping for a Christmas miracle,” says Tetiana, whose 24-year-old son Artem was captured almost three years ago. “My son’s liberation is my deepest wish. I have imagined our meeting 100 times, when he and I hug each other, and his eyes light up and he is finally in his homeland.”
Also at the protest, holding a red banner, is Liliya Ivashchyk, 29, a ballet dancer at the kyiv National Operetta Theatre. Russian forces took her boyfriend Bohdan captive in 2022. She has had no contact with him since.
“I could say it’s hard for me to be alone, but I don’t want to say that, because I’m always thinking about how he’s doing there,” Liliya says.
Backstage at the theater, Liliya shows us the messages she still sends Bohdan almost every day: photographs of little hearts. “I miss him so much. He needs to be saved and have his freedom back,” she says, her bottom lip trembling. The messages are not read.
Liliya invites us to see her perform in a special performance on Christmas Day. The dance is a Ukrainian holiday favorite: Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz, written in 1866 to lift the spirits of the Austrian public after a war. The theater is full.
“The Christmas holidays are a painful time,” he says as he prepares to go on stage. “There’s not really a festive atmosphere.”
When the show ends, theatergoers rush to collect their coats. After nearly three years of war, almost everyone here has a loved one fighting on the front lines, in captivity, or killed in combat.
“Many people in Ukraine face difficult situations,” says Liliya. “We are waiting for the time when we can celebrate together again. We must remember to thank our military for the fact that we have holidays.”
