San Francisco Frontiers - Emotional reunions, dashed hopes as Ukraine soldiers released

"I have good news! He's been released!" the jubilant father shouted down the phone to his son's friend.

"I yelled with joy!" he told reporters. "He's coming back! I even spoke to him for a few minutes."

Russia and Ukraine exchanged 157 respective prisoners of war on Thursday, the first such swap between the two warring countries since October.

Ivan, who shares his father's first name, was captured by the Russian army in November 2022 in Vuhledar, in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.

Since then, his father has attended practically every prisoner exchange -- one of the rare areas of direct cooperation between Ukraine and Russia throughout the four-year war.

In the crowd that spent hours waiting outside the hospital where the prisoners were due to arrive, Olga Kurk-Malayeva beamed radiantly.

After "three years and 10 months", the 26-year-old would finally be reunited with her husband Ruslan, a member of the 501st Marine Battalion who was taken prisoner in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, besieged by Russia at the start of the war.

"I am overwhelmed with emotion," said the young woman, wrapped in a flag bearing her husband's army corps insignia and surrounded by friends who saw her through the final hours of an agonisingly long wait.

She staggered and began to cry, but straightened up and adjusted her coat to welcome her partner.

- A desperate search -

Night was falling when the three buses carrying the liberated prisoners finally arrived. Their haggard faces appeared behind the windows as the crowd outside readied to greet their loved ones.

The mass of people surged with anticipation, but Kurk-Malayeva managed to reach the bus's door, embracing her husband as he disembarked.

The pair walked away and shared their first kiss in years.

A disorderly guard of honour hastily formed to greet the men, while some people called out names in the hopes that their relatives, missing or imprisoned for years and with whom they have had no contact, might have been included in the release.

These grieving mothers, fathers, husbands and wives never received a notification from the army, and instead came in a desperate attempt to get news of their loved ones from the released prisoners.

After the emotional reunions, those freed were immediately sent for medical checkups in one of the hospital's buildings.

Once inside, they were still visible through a window. Some of the women outside pressed photos of missing soldiers up against it. One of the former prisoners stepped forward to examine them, shaking his head in front of each one.

G.Miller--SFF