Ukrainian Journalist Dmytro Khyliuk: A Story of Survival and Resilience in Captivity

Since his release from a Russian prison, Dmytro Khyliuk has barely been off the phone. The Ukrainian journalist was detained by Russian forces in the first days of their full-scale invasion. Three and a half years later he's been released in a prisoner swap, one of eight civilians freed in a surprise move. While Russia and Ukraine have swapped military prisoners of war before, it is very rare for Russia to release Ukrainian civilians.

Dmytro has been catching up frantically on all he's missed. But he's also phoning the families of every Ukrainian he met in captivity: he memorised all their names and each detail. He knows that for some, his call may be the first confirmation that their relative is alive.

There were celebrations here last month when Dmytro was returned from Russia in a group of 146 Ukrainians. A crowd came out waving blue and yellow national flags, cheering as the buses carrying the freed men passed hooting their horns. Most on board were soldiers with sunken cheeks, emaciated after their years behind bars. Officials won't say exactly how they got the eight Ukrainian civilians back in the same exchange, only that it involved sending back in return 'people Russia was interested in'.

Stepping off the bus to a cheering crowd, Dmytro's first phone call was to tell his mother he was free. Both his parents are elderly and unwell and his greatest fear had been never seeing them again. The hardest was not knowing when you'll be allowed back. You could be freed the next day or stay prisoner for 10 years. Nobody knows how long it's for.

The details he shared of his captivity are chilling. They grabbed us and literally dragged us to the prison and on the way they beat us with rubber batons shouting things like, 'How many people have you killed?' he said, describing his transfer to Russia. He was held in multiple facilities and his account chimes with many others we've heard over the years. Sometimes they'd let the guard dog off its leash so that it could bite us. The cruelty was really shocking and it was constant. He tells me he was bitten and left bleeding. I was so stressed I only felt the pain 20 minutes later. The journalist was never charged with any crime.

Physically the first year was the hardest. We were starving. We were given very little food for a long time, he remembers. He lost more than 20kg in the first few months, causing him dizzy spells. But the soldiers he was held with were treated far worse. They would call them for interrogation, and they were beaten and tortured with electric shock, Dmytro recalls.

Dmytro's family home is a world away from all that, in a peaceful village just outside Kyiv. But the back wall of Dmytro's house still has chunks torn out of it by shrapnel and the lawn was repaired only recently where Russian troops had parked a tank. In 2022, they took over the village. A few days later, as Dmytro and his father tried to check the damage to their home, they were detained. They were both forced to the ground, bound and blindfolded, and marched into captivity.

Russian troops held them in custody where they were moved several times as the number of civilian detainees increased. Dmytro's father Vasyl was eventually set free but for many months he feared the worst for his son. I didn't know where he'd been taken and I was scared, he explains. They received just two notes from Dmytro during his captivity: a small scrap of paper saying I'm alive, I'm well. Everything's okay.

Across Ukraine, officials say more than 16,000 civilians are currently missing. So far, they have only located a fraction of them in Russian prisons. Moscow doesn't publish lists because detaining civilians with no cause is illegal. The problem is, Ukraine can't hit back. It has no pool of Russian civilian prisoners because it's against the rules of war under the Geneva Convention, complicating efforts to recover their missing citizens.

For Dmytro's family, the long and painful wait is almost over. Dmytro will join them in the village as soon as the hospital declares him fit again. His mother, Halyna, jokes that she has a long list of jobs for her only son - fixing all the damage done by the Russians. Dmytro is taking it slowly though, because being back requires some adjusting. I knew the war was still going on, but not that they were bombarding Kyiv with drones and that was unexpected and sad, he reflects. So the trees are the same, the buildings are the same. But you understand this is a different country. You're in a different reality.