Irina Kreyinina departed from Russia in September 2023, leaving her apartment behind in her job as Krasnoyrsk, her car and an accountant. He packed his bags, took his two daughters, left for Ukraine to meet his partner Yevgeni Kovatkov at the age of seven and ten, and in Ukraine. Kovatkov, who is not the biological father of his children, was caught fighting bees to fight against the Ukrainian army for Russia when he was caught.
He booked a flight to Türkiye, flew from there to Moldova, and then traveled to Kiev. He received logistic support from a helpline run by Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Service, The Hur. The name “I Want to Live” (Khuchu Zit), the helpline was originally ready to surrender to Russian soldiers. Crinina used service to find her partner, and traveled to Ukraine to find her. She was about to try to search for the first time in this war.
In an interview with DW, she said that she knew very little about Ukraine by 2022, but was a bee against the creator’s anecdote in 2014. But it was only in 2023, when his partner was sent to fight in the Donnetsk region and soon started reading after taking the prisoner.
“When I realized what the real was happening, I no longer wanted to live in Russia,” Krinina said. “I was completely disappointed with the Russian state … I don’t want my family and children to be held responsible for being scary. So I went to Ukraine to help.”
On arrival, Crinina has to face disappointment. Is his partner not happy about his journey. In the online video published by a Ukrainian youtuber, the man quietly asks: “Ira, why?” He is stressful and confused.
While Crynina currently wants to live in Ukraine, Kovatkov is waiting for a prisoner exchange to return to Russia. Today, they are no longer a pair. “I did not recognize Yevgeni,” he said. “Hey changed a lot, it is cold, withdrawn and worried. War and imprisonment change people a lot.”
‘What is our path out’?
In Ukraine, Crinina founded the project “Hour Way Out”, which enables the Russian prisoners of the war to contact them. The initiative was included by the famous Russian journalist Victoria Ivaleva, campaigning for Ukraine Sion 2014 and went to Kiev in March 2022.
Krynina visits prisoners in camps, records interaction with them, distributes parcels and enables them to call phone calls. Thus video conversations serve as evidence for a relative of prisoners that they are in captivity, saying, saying that it is difficult to identify as a prisoner of war in Russia.
Many caught soldiers are often missing, dead, or discontinued as a distor. Others are still listed as active soldiers, although they cannot be contacted. Crinina says that even the Russian Conference Office is now secretly recommended that relatives of war prisoners contact the project.
It has more than 100,000 customers in the YouTube channel and has hundreds of interviews with prisoners who talk about the lives of their formors, why they signed up with the Russian army, and how they were caught.
Therefore, Russian has a conversation facility with a relative who returned to the fight in Ukraine after Stogue returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange. Crinina advised the affected people to contact journalists and lawyers. “If a prisoner of war does not fight for his rights, then does not demand anything, the state simply sends him back to the war,” she tells him.
Despite the risk of sending former prisoners to fight on Ukrainian earth once again, Crinina wants to help the Russian prisoners of the war return home. “Every dandruff returns, so it means that a Ukrainian is back,” she says. “The exchange must be released.”
‘Everyone is associated with this war’
When Crinina arrived for the first time, Petro Yatsenko of Ukrainian Army coordination headquarters to treat war prisoners told the news platform detector media, which “played a role in helping Ukraine in the information war against Russia.”
Crinina says that she “aims to show the Russians what the real is going on.” To do this, she travels to sites of Russian attacks and record video. She believes that her approach works: “People who are close to someone in front, I say 99%, it wants to stop all this. Everyone is connected to this, and no one understands why it is still going on.”
Crynina is convinced that the video is one of those re -resulting, why her project was placed on blacklist in July 2025 on Russia’s “foreign agents”. When asked by DW if she feels guilty of crimes that have come in Russian, she SID: “Shooting.
How is she doing in Ukraine?
Many condemn the steps of Crinina for Russian Ukraine, but are mixed feelings about Ukrainians. In Vasant 2025, a post went viral on Facebook by a customer of an Kiev Fitness Club. She met Crinina while exercising and was angry that a Russian citizen was allowed to move independently to Ukraine. Some comments urged the Fitness Club to refuse Cyanina’s access, while others revealed what she is legally in the country.
Crinina says that first of all, she will tell her to speak Russian, but says that it has not happened yet. Thesis Days, she rents the apartment in Kiev and her daughters go to a Ukrainian school. She is supported by her ex -husband and works as an accountant on the side. His work for our way is voluntary.
She tells DW that she expects to return to “free Russia” one day, but says that the relationship between Russian and Ukrainian will never happen again.
“Russia has brought a lot of pain and difficulty for the Ukrainian people. I think Russians will feel guilty, but they will not be able to amend. I don’t know if Ukrainians will be able to forgive Russians.
This article was original in Ukranian.
