Like most of the other prisoners, she said, her husband is being held in a pretrial detention center in Olenivka, in the Russian-occupied part of the Donetsk region. She spoke to him 10 days ago.
The two had worked out a secret code he could flash in the event he was captured and something was wrong. “He didn’t make the signal,” she said.
“He said that everything was fine,” she said, but she knew that was not the case. “I saw that everything was not fine,” she said. “Many of his friends died. His commander was killed.”
Included in the exchange are a husband and wife, both soldiers with the Azov regiment, according to Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the defense intelligence of Ukraine. The husband was captured at Azovstal. His wife was captured earlier in a different location. They have two children.
“The children were living without their parents,” Mr. Budanov said. “We insisted that the Russians to give them over.”
The commanders of the Azov regiment and a marine infantry unit who fought at Azovstal have been moved to Moscow, where they are being held at the notorious Lefortovo Prison, according to Mr. Budanov. He said that among those being detained are Lt. Col. Denys Prokopenko, the head of the Azov regiment at Azovstal, and Capt. Svyatoslav Palamar, his deputy, along with Maj. Serhiy Volyna, commander of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade.
Mr. Pushilin, the head of Russian proxy forces in the Donetsk region, said that some of the soldiers handed over to Kyiv were members of “nationalist battalions” and that they were in very bad condition. “They have severe injuries, some have amputated limbs and other complications,” he said.
Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Source : Nytimes
