Russia frees captive medic who filmed Mariupol’s horror

A celebrated Ukrainian medic whose footage was smuggled out of the besieged metropolis of Mariupol by an Associated Press workforce was freed by Russian forces on Friday, three months after she was taken captive on the streets of town.

Yuliia Paievska is thought in Ukraine as Taira, a nickname she selected within the World of Warcraft online game. Using a physique digital camera, she recorded 256 gigabytes of her workforce’s efforts over two weeks to save lots of the wounded, together with each Russian and Ukrainian troopers.

She transferred the clips to an Associated Press workforce, the final worldwide journalists within the Ukrainian metropolis of Mariupol, one among whom fled with it embedded in a tampon on March 15. Taira and a colleague had been taken prisoner by Russian forces on March 16, the identical day a Russian airstrike hit a theater within the metropolis middle, killing round 600 folks, based on an Associated Press investigation.

“It was such a great sense of relief. Those sound like such ordinary words, and I don’t even know what to say,” her husband, Vadim Puzanov, instructed The Associated Press late Friday, respiratory deeply to include his emotion. Puzanov mentioned he spoke by cellphone with Taira, who was en path to a Kyiv hospital and feared for her well being.

Initially, the household had saved quiet, hoping negotiations would take their course. But The Associated Press spoke with him earlier than releasing the smuggled movies, which in the end had tens of millions of viewers around the globe, together with on a number of the greatest networks in Europe and the United States. Puzanov expressed gratitude for the protection, which confirmed Taira was making an attempt to save lots of Russian troopers in addition to Ukrainian civilians.

In a brief video posted Saturday on Telegram, Taira thanked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his efforts to get her launched. Addressing Ukrainians nonetheless held by Russia, with a catch in her voice, she mentioned: “I know that everything will work out and we will all be home as I am now.”

Zelenskyy had introduced Taira’s launch in a nationwide deal with.

“I’m grateful to everyone who worked for this result. Taira is already home. We will keep working to free everyone,” he mentioned.

Hundreds of outstanding Ukrainians have been kidnapped or captured, together with native officers, journalists, activists, and human rights defenders.

Russia portrayed Taira as working for the nationalist Azov Regiment, according to Moscow’s narrative that it’s trying to “denazify” Ukraine. But the AP discovered no such proof, and buddies and colleagues mentioned she had no hyperlinks to Azov, which made the final stand in a Mariupol metal plant earlier than tons of of its fighters had been captured or killed.

The footage itself is a visceral testomony to her efforts to save lots of the wounded on each side.

A clip recorded on March 10 exhibits two Russian troopers taken roughly out of an ambulance by a Ukrainian soldier. One is in a wheelchair. The different is on his knees, arms certain behind his again, with an apparent leg damage. Their eyes are coated by winter hats, they usually put on white armbands.

A Ukrainian soldier curses at one among them. “Calm down, calm down,” Taira tells him.

A girl asks her, “Are you going to treat the Russians?”

“They will not be as kind to us,” she replies. “But I couldn’t do otherwise. They are prisoners of war.”

Taira was a member of the Ukraine Invictus Games for navy veterans, the place she was set to compete in archery and swimming. Invictus mentioned she was a navy medic from 2018 to 2020 however had since been demobilized.

She acquired the physique digital camera in 2021 to movie for a Netflix documentary sequence on inspirational figures being produced by Britain’s Prince Harry, who based the Invictus Games. But when Russian forces invaded, she used it to shoot scenes of injured civilians and troopers as an alternative.