Trump-Putin talks ‘painful' for Ukraine's former POWs

The Hill

2 days ago

As President Trump seeks a breakthrough in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, former Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) are torn.
A ceasefire deal could finally free thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who remain in Russian prisons, but it could also mean ceding land that thousands have died fighting to defend.
'The guys who have been there have been rotting,' said Oleksandr Didur, a service member in Ukraine's 36th Separate Marine Infantry Brigade who spent 15 months in Russian captivity after being captured in April 2022.
Speaking through a translator last week, Didur said POWs are under 'inhumane conditions, such as torture, psychological pressure.'
Yuliia Horoshanska, another former soldier who spent four months in Russian captivity, said it was 'incredibly painful' to think about the terms being discussed to end the war.
Trump has floated 'swapping lands' between Russia and Ukraine, which apparently would cede much of eastern Ukraine to Russia in exchange for Russian forces withdrawing from other parts of the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday the Ukrainian Constitution would not allow such concessions.
'I don't want any more deaths, but I want everything that was taken away from us, given back,' Horoshanska said.
Both Didur and Horoshanska were taken captive during Russia's siege of the southern port city of Mariupol, which has become a symbol of Putin's cruelty and the devastation in Ukraine. Hundreds were killed in the bombing of a theater sheltering children and civilians from the war. A maternity ward was targeted in a Russian attack. At least 8,000 people are estimated to have been killed during the nearly three-month siege.
The former Mariupol POWs traveled to Washington, D.C., last week to raise awareness of the fate of their brothers- and sisters-in-arms. They are ambassadors for the Heart of Azovstal organization, an initiative helping former prisoners of war rehabilitate and reintegrate into society and the workforce.
'We've [been] very lucky because we are the people who came here specifically to talk about Ukrainian veterans and to remind people that there are still Mariupol defenders in Russian captivity,' Didur said. 'And that we believe and hope that the United States will help us and that our brothers- and sisters-in-arms will come back.'
Russia was reported to hold about 4,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war in 2024, although the exact number is not acknowledged by either Moscow or Kyiv. Of those POWs, between 1,500 and 2,000 are soldiers who were captured defending Mariupol more than three years ago.
The war transformed the city of half a million people 'into something unrecognizable: a tangled mess of crumpled buildings and a place of shallow graves,' a 2024 Human Rights Watch report noted.
As the city fell under Russian occupation, civilians and Ukraine's armed forces took shelter and set up defenses in the Azovstal Steel Works, a sprawling industrial compound that stretched more than 4 square miles. While some evacuations took place under siege, Russia captured thousands of soldiers in its takeover of the plant in May 2022.
Didur was severely injured during an attack from a Russian tank during that time. He was knocked unconscious and injured so gravely he was initially marked as dead. But when showing signs of life, Russian captors transferred him for medical care. He lost his left eye; three fingers on his right hand were amputated, and his left hand is nonfunctional, smashed by flying debris. A shockwave broke his teeth. In captivity, he said he suffered physical and psychological abuse.
He said his captors never bothered to set his broken arm. 'That's talking about the medical help that Russians are providing to Ukrainian prisoners of war when they're claiming to do so,' he told The Hill through a translator.
To keep his sanity over the months of captivity, he relied on his athletic training, he told The Hill.
Heart of Azovstal was launched by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man and head of the business group that owns the Illich Steel and Iron works and Azovstal Steel plant in Mariupol.
The company made the decision to suspend the factory's operations and open up the plants to civilians in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion. Azovstal was described at the time as a 'fortress in a city' by a Russian separatist deputy commander.
In addition to Ukrainian soldiers, Russia also holds Ukrainian civilians in captivity and has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian children in what the International Criminal Court has deemed a war crime.
'We have to remind you that not only [Ukrainian] soldiers are in captivity. There are a lot of civilians [in captivity]. They [Russians] are kidnapping kids and civilians. They are in the same conditions [as POWs],' said Dmytro Morozov, also an ambassador for Heart of Azovstal.
Morozov said he lost close to 90 pounds in Russian captivity, a shocking amount for his 6-foot frame. Morozov was in the infantry for the National Guard, wounded during the Russian siege on Mariupol.
Morozov said he was determined not to surrender to the Russians, who pressured him to turn on his country. He drew strength from knowing his wife and child had escaped Mariupol for Kyiv.
'Russia killed my wife's parents, my brother, and a lot of people in my family. My mom is alive. And I didn't care what they would do to me, I mean, to pressure me to flip sides. I told myself no matter what my family is safe and whatever happens, happens. So that kept me going,' he said.
Morozov was released in one of the first prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Russia, which prioritized the severely wounded, sick and women. Over three years of war, the Ukrainian government has succeeded in carrying out some 60 prisoner swaps — the largest in mid-May, with 1,000 Ukrainians brought back from Russia, including civilians.
That exchange was made possible through direct negotiations that were instigated by the Trump administration in May, in its push to end the war.
The physical state of the returning Ukrainian soldiers — heads shaved, emaciated bodies, signs of torture and abuse — only added to the urgency for more swaps.
Horoshanska said she almost lost her will to live during her months in Russian prison, 'because I lost everything that was important to me.'
Horoshanska was injured in a Russian airstrike and was receiving medical treatment in Azovstal when it came under Russian occupation.
'The day I was injured, my whole platoon was killed. … Often I was thinking it was a mistake I stayed alive, but I was thinking about my daughter and understood she needs me.'
Mariupol is in the southeastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, which remains largely under Russian control, making it likely part of the 'land swap' Trump is pushing.
Russia controls about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, including a large portion of the country's east, the Crimean Peninsula in the south, and pockets in the northeast, the areas of Sumy and Kharkiv.
In a video address on Saturday, Zelensky said Ukraine's Constitution bars him from relinquishing territory. But just more than half of Ukrainians agreed that Kyiv should be open to making some territorial concessions as part of a peace deal to end the war, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Putin has proposed ending the fighting in exchange for Ukraine handing over roughly one-third of the eastern Donetsk region that Kyiv still controls, The Wall Street Journal reported. The front line would be frozen elsewhere, including in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions that Russia also claims as its own.
A counterproposal from Europe, according to the Journal, would have Ukraine hand over the entire Donetsk region in exchange for Russia withdrawing from occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south. The European plan also calls for ironclad security guarantees for Ukraine, including potential NATO membership.
Horoshanska reflected on the tough choices for Ukraine and all that has been lost.
'I want to go back home, this is true that the building, as my home, does not exist. But I want to go back to the region where I was born and raised and visit the graves where my relatives are,' she said.