Ukrainian civilian released in replacement of prisoners tells about “permanent cruelty”

Since his release from the Russian prison, Dmytro Khyliuk has barely made a phone.

The Ukrainian journalist was detained by Russian forces in the early days of their full -scale invasion. Three and a half years later, he was released into the prisoner, one of the eight civilians was released from an unexpected step.

While Russia and Ukraine have previously changed military prisoners, it is very rare for Russia to release Ukrainian civilians.

DMYTRO catching up with everything he missed. But he also calls the families of every Ukrainian language he met in captivity: he remembered all their names and every detail.

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

Last month, there were celebrations when Dmytro was returned from Russia to a group of 146 Ukrainians.

The crowd came out, waving blue and yellow national flags, cheering when the buses carrying the liberated people passed, grabbing their horns.

Most on board were soldiers with sunken cheeks, shot after their years behind bars.

Officials will definitely not say how they returned eight Ukrainian civilians to the same exchange, only that she participated back in return “people were interested in”.

One of the sources stated that the residents of Kursk region in Russia, evacuated when Ukrainian troops launched their invasion in 2024. The exact status of the group is after that it is unclear.

The first telephone call dmytro got off the bus to a cheerful crowd to tell the mother that he was free. Both of his parents are elderly and bad, and his greatest fear has never seen them again.

“The most difficult thing was not to know if you were allowed to return. You can be released the next day or stay captive for 10 years. Nobody knows how long it is.”

We met DMYTRO immediately after release when it was restored to Kiev’s hospital.

The details he shared in his captivity are cooled.

“They grabbed us and literally dragged us to jail, and as they beat us with rubber batons, they shouted like,” How many people did you kill? “,” he said, describing his move to Russia.

It was held in several facilities and its account with many others we have heard over the years.

“Sometimes they allowed the dog to protect the dog so that she could bite us. The cruelty was truly shocking and was constant.”

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

The journalist was never accused of any crime.

Physically, the first year was the most difficult. “We were starving. We have been given very little food for a long time,” he recalls. In the first months, he lost more than 20 kg, causing him dizzy. But the soldiers with whom he passed were treated much worse.

“They would call them for questioning, and they were beaten and tortured,” Dmitry recalls.

He heard their pain and saw the bruises.

A journalist’s family house is a world from all this, in a beautiful village of Kazarovichi near Kiev.

It feels calm, except for air raids, with gardens full of birds, shrubs and fruit trees.

But the back wall of the DMYTRO house still has pieces torn from its shards, and the lawn was only repaired where Russian troops parked the tank.

In 2022, at the beginning of their full -scale invasion, when the Russians moved through Kiev, they seized the village.

A few days later, when Dmitry and his father Basil tried to check their damage to their home, they were detained.

Russian troops forced both men to the ground, tied and tied their eyes, and moved into captivity. Now the couple knows that they were in the basement under the local warehouses where the Russians created their base.

Men moved several times when the number of civilian detainees increased.

In the end, Basil was released, but for many months he feared the worst for his son.

“I didn’t know where he was taken away, and I was scared,” the pensioner tells me. “There were shots at night. One man was taken outside, then the shot was fired. He didn’t return. I still don’t know the fate of all the people who were there.”

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

“I am alive, I’m good. Everything is fine,” Dmitry wrote both in Ukraine. They will only receive one note for all of it in captivity.

In other families, there was no news at all.

All over Ukraine, officials say there are currently no more than 16,000 civilians. So far, they have only placed part of them in Russian prisons.

Moscow does not publish lists because the delay of civilians is unlawful. But it makes them return extremely complicated.

Forty-three men are still kept only from the DMYTRO village.

These include the scraping, detained at the same time, which are held in the same cellars and then moved to Russia. Now he has a new grandson whom he had never met, and a family who is very missing him.

“It’s hard. It’s really hard. We’re smiling, yes, and thank you, I have a new grandson,” says Volodimar’s wife Vera when Jaroslav’s baby makes his way near her on a game mat. “But I had a husband – and now.”

“The government states that it does not change our relatives for Russian soldiers, so we expect the fourth year until there is some way to return them.”

Faith is deeply disappointed. But also Ukraine’s human rights Ambudsman.

DMYTRO LUBINETS describes the case with Russia as a chess game: You follow all the rules, just to get your opponent, pull on boxing gloves and hit you.

The problem is that Ukraine cannot affect. He does not have a pool of civil prisoners in Russia because it is against the rules of the war in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Sending Russian soldiers back to Ukrainian civilians would become a disaster.

“The next day, Russia will take thousands of civilians hostage in the occupied areas to only change their soldiers,” the Ombudsman notes. “Thus, Russia seizes our civilians, and there is no legal mechanism to return them.”

There was one trade with the participation of Ukrainian citizens, detained and convicted here for cooperation with the enemy: the group – which was supposed to be volunteers – was replaced by Ukrainian civilians held in Russia.

It is unclear whether it was repeated.

For the DMYTRO family, the long and excruciating expectation is almost over. He will join them in the village as soon as the hospital states that he is coming again.

His mother Halin jokes that she has a long list of jobs for his only son – putting all the damage done by the Russians.

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

“I can’t control my emotions,” she tells me in tears. “When the smoke called, he told me calmly. That he returned to Ukraine and I should no longer cry. But we didn’t see our son three and a half years!”

DMYTRO takes this slowly because the return here requires some adjustment.

“I knew that the war was going on, but not that they bombed Kiev drones, and it was unexpected and sad,” he says. “Thus, the trees are the same, the buildings are the same. But you understand that it is another country. You are in another reality.”

Additional reporting by Marian Matveichuk and Kristina Wolk