A Ukrainian journalist who was held incommunicado by Russia for more than three years has been released on Sunday as part of the latest prisoner exchange between Moscow and Kyiv.
For more than three years, Dmytro Khilyuk, 50, was one of the thousands of Ukrainian civilians detained in Russia, something illegal under international law.
Khilyuk’s elderly parents had no information about his whereabouts but kept campaigning for his release, attending meetings with politicians in Ukraine and abroad, going to protests and tirelessly writing to Russian authorities.
A video from the exchange on Sunday released by Ukrainian authorities showed Khilyuk calling his mother just moments after crossing into Ukraine.
“I knew you cared about me and worried about me. Mum, don’t cry. I’ll be home soon,” he can be heard saying.
Khilyuk and his father Vasyl were detained by Russian troops while attempting to get basic supplies during the occupation of their village, Kozarovychi, north of Kyiv. While Vasyl Khyliuk was released a few days later, Dmytro disappeared without a trace.
Moscow repeatedly denied holding him, despite numerous accounts from fellow prisoners placing him in detention facilities in Russia.
The Russian Investigative Committee and the Russian Prison Service in Bryansk both officially informed the Khyliuks’ lawyer in December 2022 and January 2023 that he was not in Russia and that they had no information about him.
Halyna and Vasyl Khyliuk look at a picture of their son Dmytro in their home in Kozarovychi, Ukraine. – Ivana Kottasova/CNN
This note is the only letter Halyna and Vasyl Khyliuk received from their son Dmytro since his detention more than two years ago. – Ivana Kottasova/CNN
CNN visited Khilyuk’s parents in 2024, shortly after Moscow finally admitted that Dima — as his parents call him — was in Russian custody.
All his parents had from Dima directly was a short, handwritten note dated April 2022, in which he told them he was “alive and well” and which the Khilyuks did not receive until August that year.
According to Khilyuk’s lawyer, he was never charged or convicted of any crime.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed Khilyuk was among eight civilians released on Sunday, sharing photos of the group on his official Telegram channel.
Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of POWs said the eight civilians were released alongside soldiers and other security force members. It said all of the released were are privates and sergeants and almost all spent more than three years in captivity.
Ukraine did not say how many people were included in the exchange. The Russian Defence Ministry said earlier on Sunday that 146 Russian servicemen were returned from Ukraine in exchange for 146 Ukrainian prisoners of war, adding that eight Russian civilians from the Kursk region were also returned.
Kyiv has not commented on the claim that Russian civilians were included in the exchange. Previously, when Russian civilians were released from Ukraine, Kyiv said they were Russian saboteurs and collaborators.
Rare moment of hope
Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s Chief of Staff, said that former Kherson mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko was also released on Sunday. Yermak said Mykolayenko spent more than three years in Russian captivity, having refused to be exchanged in 2022, insisting that a critically ill fellow prisoner be released first.
Speaking on Sunday, Mykolayenko said that he has “seen nothing but bars and concrete in recent years.”
He described Sunday as his “second birthday” and said: “It is a wonderful coincidence that my mother’s birthday is tomorrow. Mum, I love you very much. She is 91 years old … I did not know if I would find her alive and well.”
The Ukrainian government said another journalist, Mark Kaliush, was also freed on Sunday, as was Serhiy Kovalyov, a medic who treated injured soldiers and civilians during the siege of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol.
Their release marks a rare moment of hope for the families of Ukrainians detained in Russia.
According to Kyiv, at least 16,000 Ukrainian civilians are known to be detained in Russia, although the real number is likely to be much higher.
Some 37,000 Ukrainians, including civilians, children and members of the military, are officially recognized as missing.
Many have been detained in occupied territories, detained for months or even years without any charges or trial, and deported to Russia. They include activists, priests, politicians and community leaders as well as people who appear to have been snatched by Russian troops at random at checkpoints and other places in occupied Ukraine.
Some 30 Ukrainian journalists are currently detained in Russia, most without ever being charged or convicted of anything, according to Ukraine’s Institute of Mass Information.
The detention of civilians by an occupying power is illegal under international laws of conflict, except in a few narrowly-defined situations and with strict time limits.
There is no established legal framework for the treatment and exchange of civilian detainees in the same way there is for prisoners of war.
CNN’s Victoria Butenko and Olga Voitovych contributed reporting.
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