2024-02-21 03:50:15
The special correspondent of the Romanian agency Agerpress Christian Lupashcu reported that a Ukrainian serviceman from the Chernivtsi region, captured by the Russian army, has returned home after almost a year and nine months of hell. Ruslan Mishna fell into Russian hands on May 17, 2022, being in one of the last Ukrainian platoons that resisted the army of the Russian Federation in the battles at Azovstal, BTA reported.
When the metallurgical plant in Mariupol was captured by the Russian armed forces, Ruslan Mishna and hundreds of his fellow soldiers, who hid in tunnels and underground bunkers, became a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance against the enemy from the East.
The battle for Azovstal lasted 80 days, with airstrikes on the plant as devastating as the fighting inside the plant itself.
At the end of the fighting, Ruslan was captured along with his fellow soldiers. The 41-year-old man was taken to Olenovka in the Donetsk region, where all prisoners of war from Azovstal are detained. Hungry and beaten, dejected and without strength, he is determined to resist. He was then transferred to a prison in Luhansk, where he remained until this month.
On February 8, 2024, Ruslan is one of a hundred prisoners of war exchanged between Ukraine and Russia, and gets a chance to return home after a year and almost nine months.
“I was hoping to get out of prison sooner or later. They told us: “Guys, hold on a little! You will be released either way. All the time I hoped that I would return to my wife, to my beloved woman and to my daughter, whom I love very much, to my family,” the Ukrainian soldier told Agerpress.