The online.ua film crew took part in the meeting of Ukrainian heroes during the 50th POW exchange. The day before, 207 Ukrainian soldiers returned home, 40 of them wounded and seriously ill. Some of them spent almost two years of hell in Russian captivity. Ukraine welcomes its heroes with hugs, flags and applause. We will share a video with you that needs no comments.
Return of Ukrainian prisoners
Talking to the soldiers released from captivity, from the first words, you understand the isolation they were in. The guys ask if Zaporizhzhia is Ukraine, and when they finally call their relatives (sometimes this is the first conversation in 2 years of captivity!), they ask how their elderly parents are feeling and where their siblings are.
Now I believe now. Finally. Many said that they are already home, coming home. Every time we went somewhere, we were told to exchange. We came to another place and it all happened again. I don't know, I'm speechless. I'm just shocked," says one of the liberated Ukrainian soldiers, hugging our correspondent.
Leaving the bus, defenders fall and kiss the ground, crying with happiness and hugging their brothers.
No one holds back their emotions: exhausted and emaciated, they smile and call their relatives for the first time. Relatives of the defenders cry after hearing the long-awaited phrase: "I'm home."
Hi,Dad! It's me, Ihor. I am already in Ukraine, I was exchanged. I'm alive, everything's fine, dad, one of the released prisoners calls his father, barely holding back tears.
With Ukrainian flags on their shoulders, they sing the national anthem together — finally, it can be sung in their native land.
The bus is leaving, and ordinary Ukrainians are standing along the road — seeing the released prisoners, they go out to meet them, holding Ukrainian flags and hailing the heroes.
The defender wrote a poem after his release from captivity
Released from captivity, Valerii Vasyliev, who was in enemy captivity for a long year and a half, wrote the following lines:
I'm finally home, thankful to Heaven
This taste and smell of freedom!
I look and can't believe my eyes
Of the Motherland's beauty of nature.
Those yellow deer and heavenly blue
Harmoniously combined into a flag.
Well, how can one not love you here?
Oh, my mama, my Ukraine!
This moment of joy I've been waiting for a year
and half, and believed, I always hoped.
And the time of happiness for me has come
It took so long to get back home!
The lines to finally sing out loud,
That glory and will didn't die,
And finally, we, captive brothers-in-arms,
Freedom has smiled on Fate.
I'm grateful to people, friends and family,
And the country hasn't forgotten about us,
I bow myself down to the ground
May my Motherland ever flourish!
Who returned home?
According to the press service of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, among the rescued service members are:
95 representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,
56 National Guardsmen,
26 border guards,
29 soldiers of the Territorial Defense
one representative of the National Police of Ukraine.
In particular:
180 soldiers who returned home — from private and sergeant ranks;
27 Ukrainian officers.
The oldest of discharged soldiers is 61, and the youngest will soon turn 21.
