The Ukrainian civilian liberated in an exchange of prisoners tells the “constant cruelty”

Since his release from a Russian prison, Dmytro Khyliuk has barely been off guard.

The Ukrainian journalist was arrested by Russian forces in the first days of their large -scale invasion. Three and a half years later, he was released in an exchange of prisoners, one of the eight civilians released in a surprise decision.

While Russia and Ukraine have already exchanged military prisoners of war, it is very rare that Russia releases Ukrainian civilians.

Dmytro frantically caught up everything he missed. But he also called the families of each Ukrainian whom he met in captivity: he memorized all their names and every detail.

He knows that for some, his call can be the first confirmation that their parent is alive.

There were celebrations here last month when Dmytro was dismissed from Russia to a group of 146 Ukrainians.

A crowd came out by waving blue and yellow national flags, applauding while the buses carrying the liberated men passed by hooking the horns.

Most on board were soldiers with engulfed cheeks, emaciated after their years behind bars.

The officials will not say exactly how they recovered the eight Ukrainian civilians in the same exchange, but only that it involved returning in return “the people of Russia were interested”.

A source said that people understood residents of the Kursk region in Russia, evacuated when Ukrainian forces launched their foray into 2024. The exact status of the group after that is not clear.

Leaving the bus for an enthusiastic crowd, Dmytro’s first telephone call was to tell his mother that he was free. His two parents are elderly and sick and his greatest fear had never been to come back to them.

“The hardest part was not knowing when you are allowed to come back. You could be released the next day or stay prisoner for 10 years. No one knows how long it is for.”

We met Dmytro shortly after his release when he recovered in a Kyiv hospital.

The details he shared from his captivity cool.

“They caught us and literally dragged us to the prison and the way they beat us with rubber batons shouting things like:” How many people have you killed? “” He said, describing his transfer to Russia.

He has been held in several facilities and his account is protected with many others that we have heard over the years.

“Sometimes they left the watchdog out of his leash so that he could bite us. Cruelty was really shocking and it was constant.”

He tells me that he was bitten and left bleeding. “I was so stressed that I only felt the pain 20 minutes later.”

The journalist has never been accused of any crime.

Physically, the first year was the most difficult. “We were hungry. We were given very little food for a long time,” he recalls. He lost more than 20 kg in the first months, which caused him dizziness. But the soldiers with whom they were detained were treated much worse.

“They would call them on interrogation, and they were beaten and tortured with an electric shock,” recalls Dmytro.

He heard their pain and saw bruises.

The journalist’s family home is a world far from all this, in the pretty village of Kozarovychi just outside Kyiv.

He feels peaceful, apart from the air raids, with gardens full of poultry, blackberries and fruit trees.

But the rear wall of Dmytro’s house still has pieces torn off by bursts of shells and the lawn was only distributed where the Russian troops had parked a reservoir.

In 2022, just at the start of their large -scale invasion when the Russians advanced on kyiv, they took over the village.

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

The Russian troops forced the two men on the ground, released them and bandaged them, and plunged them into captivity. The couple now knew that they were held in a basement under local warehouses where the Russians had made their base.

Men have been moved several times as the number of civilian prisoners increased.

Vasyl was finally released but for several months he feared the worst for his son.

“I did not know where he had been taken and I was afraid,” said the retiree. “There were shots at night. A man was taken outside, then a shot was fired. He did not come back. I still don’t know the fate of all the people who were there.”

Then he and his wife obtained a tiny scrap of paper from a Russian prison.

“I’m alive, I’m fine. Everything is fine,” Dmytro wrote in Ukrainian. They would receive only one more note from their time in captivity.

Other families have had no news at all.

Throughout Ukraine, officials claim that more than 16,000 civilians are currently missing. So far, they have only found a fraction in the Russian prisons.

Moscow does not publish lists because the detention of civilians without cause is illegal. But that makes them bring them back extremely complicated.

Forty-three men are still detained in the area around the village of Dmytro alone.

They include Volodymyr lobbs, detained at the same time, held in the same basements, then moved to Russia. He now has a new grandson he has never met and a family who misses it.

“It’s difficult. It’s really difficult. We smile, yes, and thank you, I have a new grandson,” said Vera de Volodymyr, while the baby Yaroslav Gargoute next to her on a game mat. “But I had a husband – and now I don’t do it.”

“The government says that it will not exchange our loved ones against Russian soldiers, so we are waiting for the fourth consecutive year until there is a way to recover them.”

Vera is deeply frustrated. But the human rights mediator of Ukraine is also.

Dmytro Lubinets describes treatments with Russia as failures: you stick to all the rules, only for your opponent to get up, pull on boxing gloves and hit.

The problem is that Ukraine cannot fight back. He has no Russian civil prison pools because it is contrary to the rules of the war under the Geneva Convention. Discovering Russian soldiers in exchange for Ukrainian civilians would be a disaster.

“The next day, Russia would take thousands of civilians hostage in occupied areas, just to exchange its soldiers,” said the mediator. “Russia therefore captures our civilians and there is no legal mechanism to return them.”

There was a business involving Ukrainian citizens detained and condemned here for collaborating with the enemy: a group – who would be volunteers – was exchanged for Ukrainian civilians held in Russia.

It is not clear if it has been repeated.

For Dmytro’s family, the long and painful wait is almost over. He will join them in the village as soon as the hospital declares it again in shape.

Her mother, Halyna, joking that she has a long list of jobs for her only son – solve all the damage caused by the Russians.

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

“I cannot control my emotions,” she said in tears. “When Dima called, he told me to be calm. That he was back in Ukraine and I should no longer cry. But we haven’t seen our son for three and a half years!”

Dmytro takes it slowly, because being back here requires an adjustment.

“I knew that the war was continuing, but not that they bombed Kyiv of drones and it was unexpected and sad,” he said. “So the trees are the same, the buildings are the same. But you understand that it is a different country. You are in a different reality.”

Additional Mariana Matveichuk and Kristina Volk report