Over more than three years with invading Russian forces, Ukraine has seen the creation of the largest women’s movement in the history of the country.
Mother, wives, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, aunt and fiancé have banded together by thousands to find the missing or imprisoned soldiers. Women have organized informal groups and associations that work with each other across the country.
Prisoners are strictly secret. Journalists are never informed about the time and location of exchanges. NAR is the names and places of hospitals that freed the prisoners of war, or Pows, are taken for medical examination after being made public.
Nevertheless, this morning, several hundred citizens have gathered in the courtyard of a clinic in Cherniiv to wait for the arrival of the bus N route from the Russia-Ukraine border.
A retired Nadia from Khameltskey has not missed a prisoner exchange in more than a year. His 41 -year -old son Olecusandra Kololuk disappeared on the front near Bakhmut in February 2023.
“I search and hope,” says Nadia, who holds many pictures in hand.
Everyone here has pictures of sons, husbands, father or fiancé, and they all want to broadcast subjects or print on paper.
Families hope that loved ones will be freed
The whole family seeks the shadow of the apple trees of the courtyard. They gather according to the number of army brigade or Russian gel of their loved ones, where they are bean. The standard of 36th Marine Brigade is easily identified from distance. In April 2022, more than 1,300 members of the brigade were taken hostage in Mariupol. His families have waited for the bee for his release.
During that time, Olha Handzla from Uman city has a bee to send a single letter to Yaven, a 34 -year -old gold son. He never received any response. This is his foreh -prisoner exchange.
“I come to support my soldiers. And perhaps to meet someone who has seen my son in one of the camps … who can tell me how he is and where he is.”
Zhmerma’s Valentina Ocherena is looking for her son Naazar, who went missing in early April 2022. Valentina still expects the best, as soldiers released from Marialupol saw her in the camps.
“I told that for the Coordination Office. He contacted a man who saw him and could confirm what I had. But the Nazar is still registered as missing,” he is Bamons.
Several dozen women who have reached together from Sumi area by the bus have directly deployed Thamel in front of the police cordon. There is a separate courtyard behind it where prisoner transport buses are going to come.
The thesis holds a placard with pictures of her fiancé Oleh Halushka’s tattoo, the youngest in the thesis women. A National Guard of the 15th Operational Brigade, known as the Kara-Dag Brigade, disappeared from the front in Zaporizhia a year ago.
“Probably someone wants to recognize one of her tattoos,” she says.
The arrival of prisoners is considered a celebration. The representatives of the prisoner exchange coordination office patiently explain to those who congratulate the soldiers, what to thank, what they don’t ask, and how to avoid stress. But he does not always work.
In a few meters, bus and clinic names, brigades and a thunderous waterfall of prison are shouted at new free men who are shown so many and are given hands filled with pictures.
Only to look a few, answer questions or talk to journalists.
“It’s difficult, there are lots of faces,” smiles a 36 -year -old Marine named Yuri, as he disappears in the hospital with a pile of photos.
Ukrainian plays an important role relative to soldiers
Despite all that, the relatives of the soldiers and the coordination office believe that search meetings are important.
As Petro Yatsenco, a speaker at the Coordination Office, “here even if relatives don’t bring much with them, they see how much they love.”
It is a relative who identifies the lakes of soldiers in the granular Russian video. And found one of Ukraine’s largest telegram channels and imprisoned soldiers have around 122,000 customers. Dozens of names and photos are added each day. The sooner a person can be identified, the sooner they can be released, Yatsenko says.
In late May, the UA deficit, a project that uses publicly available information, listed the names of more than 6,000 unconscious Ukrainian soldiers. The Coordination Office says that the number of unidified power is shrinking daily as a result of relative help.
Nevertheless, around 65,000 persons have been currently disappeared. Although most of them will never return home, none of his friends and relatives want to give up hope.
This is why Yatsenko, the speaker of the Coordination Office, says it is imported to be present in the Pav exchanges for relative: “They give something to catch people.”
‘I want to do well, be a ray of light’
Activists have a lot to keep them busy among exchanges, also – meeting with the representative from the coordination office, catching the splies and monuments, unveiling the plaques and traveling to the conferences.
“I want to do well and there is a ray of light for families … to tell them that they are not forgetting,” says Olegh Muslo’s daughter Katerin Mussalova, a Marine who was taken prisoner in Mariaupol. The charitable trust of Katarna helps the family to gain state benefits, along with pursuing international lobby work on the stalf of the heart of action prisoners.
Ukraine’s prisoner exchange coordination office has regular meetings with more than 150 civilian organizations and private family initiatives.
“We are thrilled when families are together and arranged because it makes it easy for them to get answers to their questions,” says spokesman Yatsenko.
Nevertheless, cooperation is not always creative. Yatsenko is important for some groups. Hey says that the decline for Russian provocation or scammer, organizing demonstrations with sensitive information or organizing demonstrations accusing the coordination office of not enough.
Yatsenko says: “Every successful prisoner exchange always brings a wave of disappointment from those whose somition infidch has been found or freed so far.”
This article was the original published in Ukrainian.
