Tales like hers solely added to the nation’s celebrations over the return of so many Ukrainians, women and men who have been captured because the invading troops tried to overrun cities and cities throughout the east. But others proceed to be held, their location and well being unsure. Not less than 150 are medics, in response to some accounts, and lots of are from the 555th army hospital in Mariupol.

The Washington Submit spoke to kinfolk of a few of these medics, who, as Russian forces have been bombing that metropolis, sought refuge with native residents in its sprawling Azovstal and Ilyich metal crops. Their seize violated the Geneva Conventions, which specify that “personnel engaged solely within the assortment, transport and therapy of the wounded and sick” ought to be “revered and guarded underneath all circumstances.”

“In the event that they fall into the fingers of the enemy, they shall not be handled as prisoners of battle,” the conventions learn.

The other occurred, although. And nobody is aware of how Russia’s unlawful annexations Friday of 4 Ukrainian territories will have an effect on the medics’ destiny.

‘They’ve taken our lives’

After she heard in regards to the prisoner of battle alternate on Sept. 21, Svitlana Harlinskaya was “ready each second” for her older sister to name and say, “I’ve been freed.”

However the cellphone by no means rang. Olena Biiovska, 49, wasn’t amongst these launched.

“You perceive hopelessness, and also you need to shout to the entire world,” Harlinskaya mentioned.

Her sister had labored as a army medic for 18 years, serving in Kyiv and on the entrance within the east. Six months earlier than the combating broke out, Harlinskaya mentioned, she was transferred to the 555th hospital in Mariupol.

As soon as Russia invaded, communications with Biiovska have been sporadic. When a bomb destroyed the hospital, she and different medics moved to the Ilyich metal plant.

Generally she would ship textual content messages or name with seconds-only messages. “She mentioned, ‘I’m alive, I really like you, I’m working to function,’” Harlinskaya recounted not too long ago. One name lastly lasted a couple of minutes. “She mentioned that there have been so many wounded, all with critical accidents. She mentioned it was insufferable.”

In mid-April, Russian forces broke by Ukrainian defenses on the Ilyich plant and took the troops and medical personnel prisoner. Biiovska’s final textual content message was that day. After that, nothing.

Her household knew by contacts that she was a prisoner. A photograph of Biiovska and different medics confirmed up on a Russian Telegram channel. “She was very skinny,” Harlinskaya mentioned. On the finish of August, the Crimson Cross delivered a letter that Biiovska had written two months earlier.

Biiovska’s two sons, ages 19 and 21, now dwell with their aunt. “They ask me every single day when their mom will come house,” Harlinskaya mentioned.

Her anguish comes by when she talks in regards to the Russians: “They’ve taken our lives and the lives of our family members.”

A teddy bear demonstrator

Alona Koval’s youthful sister, Maryna Golinko, is a medic and first lieutenant with the Ukrainian thirty sixth brigade. She was transferred final November from Kyiv to Mariupol, the place the beginning of the battle meant a really completely different mission, evacuating and treating troopers from the battlefield. “It was scary,” Koval mentioned.

The brigade was within the bunkers under the Ilyich metal plant for the ultimate weeks earlier than town’s fall. In one in all Golinko’s final textual content messages to her sister earlier than being taking prisoner by Russian troopers, she described the destruction round her and huge numbers of lifeless and wounded.

“I can’t describe all of it. I sit and cry,” wrote Golinko, 28. “The final day I’ve felt such concern and despair, and want to dwell like no time earlier than in my life.” In a separate textual content to her mom, she wrote that it could be her final message and that it made no sense to seek for her physique.

Then adopted what Koval remembers as “horrible days” when the household didn’t know the place Golinko was. They lastly noticed her in that very same photograph on the Russian Telegram channel, they usually additionally acquired a Crimson Cross-relayed letter in late August. Golinko wrote that she was consuming three meals a day and being handled properly.

Koval didn’t imagine a phrase, although she “wished it to be true.” Her fears have been confirmed by one of many medics who was freed final month, who mentioned her sister and others have been being held in horrible situations in Russia and recurrently overwhelmed.

Simply days later, Koval was at Kyiv’s Independence Sq. as dozens of kinfolk of Ukrainian prisoners of battle gathered. She held slightly teddy bear, a treasured reminder of her sister as she helped display for the prisoners’ launch.

“Maryna wished to be a medic since she was 5. This was her first affected person,” Koval defined. “We care for him now as a result of he’s so vital to us.”

‘Be glad you’re alive’

Not less than Yurik Mkrtchian’s household is aware of the place he was taken after being captured on the Ilyich metal works. And at the least they know he survived the explosion that in July killed 53 Ukrainians and wounded 75 on the Olenivka prisoner of battle camp in Russian-controlled territory within the east.

Mkrtchian, a 31-year-old anesthesiologist, managed a quick name to his sister Karina the day after the blast.

‘I’m alive, right here, and in the identical situation,” he informed her.

A few month later, he despatched a letter that he signed “a army physician.”

“At this time is one month in captivity and the phrases, ‘be glad you’re alive,’ start to ring tensely in my head,” he wrote. “I demand just one factor: freedom for me and my work.”

His mom longs for her son to be launched. Maryna Mkrtchian says she felt “pleasure” that so many others have been a part of the prisoner swap and got here up together with her personal rationalization as to why Yurik was not amongst them.

“He have to be nonetheless wanted,” she mentioned. “There are nonetheless prisoners, there are wounded. I can’t despair and cry and scream — and never be completely satisfied that [another] mom can now hug her son or her daughter.”

Olha Shapkova and Volodymyr Shapkov met whereas finding out on the Kyiv army academy, and each have been stationed in Mariupol earlier than the battle. She returned to the capital to offer start to their first baby, Yevgeny, in December. Her husband, a surgeon, adopted for his son’s arrival.

“He got here to us for just a few days after which went again,” Shapkova mentioned. “I deliberate to affix him, however I didn’t make it in time.”

They spoke by cellphone firstly of March. Silence adopted for months, and because the disaster in Mariupol worsened, she feared he might need been taken prisoner: “I monitored the web, all of the Russian Telegram channels, every thing I might. However I didn’t need to imagine it, after all, as a result of it’s scary.”

In early June, Shapkov known as from an unknown quantity and mentioned he was being held within the Olenivka camp. The lethal explosion there was July 29.

“I didn’t sleep all evening,” she mentioned. “I’m a breastfeeding mom. I’ve to feed the infant. Every thing is transferred to the kid, all of the nerves. He, too, doesn’t sleep, cries, feels every thing.”

When Russia lastly put out an inventory of the lifeless, 28-year-old Volodymyr Shapkov’s identify wasn’t on it.

His spouse final bought a glimpse of him in June when the Russians launched two movies of medics they have been holding. He was “frighteningly skinny,” she mentioned, however she nonetheless was relieved. “He had two legs and two arms — thank God.”