The two sisters brought with them a chocolate cake from the nearby grocery store and put candles on it: two red hearts, and a neon orange 2 and 5. Their brother had turned 25 in April, but he could not properly celebrate his birthday in a Russian prison.
They brought along other things, too: a carton of Winston cigarettes, lighters, a bottle of Coca-Cola, some chocolates. The things that he liked, the things he had not had for so long. The sisters wondered: Would he still have his sense of humour? Would he still be the same?
And then they waited for their brother, Yurii Dobriev, as they had been doing for the past 18 months, alongside about 150 other people who were also waiting for their loved ones last Tuesday afternoon in a car park in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine, a couple hours north of Kyiv.
The buses were coming, they were told, carrying 205 Ukrainian prisoners of war. They had just been exchanged for 205 Russian prisoners, the 64th prisoner exchange of the war, one of the largest so far.
“We are very anxious – whether he’s really there or not,” said Anastasiia Dobrieva (31), one of Dobriev’s sisters. “We just want to see him as soon as possible. It’s incredibly emotional for us – we haven’t seen him for a year and a half.”
Each person in the car park had endured a hole being ripped into a family. Each reunion would come only after years of pain.
One released prisoner would learn that his father could still bear hug him like he was a little boy. Another already knew that his mother would not be there; she had died while he was in prison. There would be tears of disappointment and joy and the occasional epic coincidence. In one of the other recent prisoner exchanges, for example, a woman soldier was reunited with her son, a soldier who had also been taken prisoner. Neither knew the other was being held.
More than 4,550 Ukrainian prisoners had already been traded, a rare example of co-operation between Ukraine and Russia since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. But many Ukrainians who have been released have reported incidents of torture, of starvation, of being forced to sing the Russian anthem every day. In interviews, prisoners of war have said they were told repeatedly that Ukraine didn’t exist any more, that their country had forgotten about them.
Thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war are still being held in Russian prisons; the Ukrainian government won’t say exactly how many.
On this Tuesday afternoon, many people came on blind hope alone. Maybe their loved one would be on a bus. And if not, maybe one of the former prisoners would recognise a picture. So they held photos in wrinkled plastic sleeves, often marked with a name, a brigade and a date of disappearance: The brother who disappeared on the first day of the war near Henichesk. The son who was injured in Kherson on the second day.
“I’ve been waiting for my son for so long,” said Yuliia Kohut (55), holding his photograph. “Yes, we’ve waited and waited for him, for such a long time.”
When the final list of prisoners returning on Tuesday’s buses was made public, though, Vadym Kohut was not on it. His mother started to sob.
Dobrieva and Inha Palamarchuk, the sisters with the cake, had been told that their brother’s name was on the list. But they knew nothing was certain, not until Dobriev walked off that bus.
Dobriev, a soldier in the national guard, had gone missing in a forest in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine in late 2023. His sisters figured he knew something bad was going to happen. He wrote to them and to his fiance, saying that he loved them, and then he went silent. They scoured social media posts and saw a video of Dobriev in sub-zero temperatures, barely dressed, his hands tied. At least, they thought, he was alive.
Over the months, the sisters talked to other released prisoners who had seen Dobriev. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed he was a prisoner. They learned his location from the last prisoner exchange: Returning soldiers had recognised him. As of April 17th, he was in the Sverdlovsk prison colony.
“The guys told us that in prison the food is terrible – rotten fish, rotten cabbage,” Dobrieva said.
On Monday, the sisters learned he was on the list to be exchanged. They took an overnight train from Odesa to Kyiv and drove to the meeting point. At 3.21pm Ukrainian time, the government office that handles prisoner swaps sent a text message to Palamarchuk: “Congratulations! Yurii Dobriev was released from captivity,” it said.
Two ambulances arrived first, each one carrying a soldier who could not walk. They were pulled out on stretchers. “Glory to Ukraine,” people shouted. “Glory to heroes.” The men waved, blearily.
Just before 5pm, police sirens could be heard in the distance, as police escorted the four buses carrying the prisoners. The buses soon pulled in, and the men poured out. Many were already draped in Ukrainian flags, after being met by other government officials near the border. Most looked almost identical. They had been whittled away in the Russian prisons, their bodies gaunt, their eyes hollow, their heads shaved.
Serhiy Laptiev (23), had been in captivity for three years. He said he was treated decently in the last prison he was in. He found out that his mother had died through a message from the Red Cross, but he stayed alive by thinking about his daughter, born just before he was taken prisoner.
“I had someone to live for,” he said. “I didn’t lose heart.”
As he walked through the crowd, people surrounded him. Had he seen this soldier? This one? Most of the time, Laptiev shook his head, including when Kohut asked if he recognised the photo of her son.
But her friend, Anzhelika Yatsyna (52), was looking for her older brother, and this time, there was a fortunate coincidence. Laptiev had shared a cell with Oleh Obodovskyi for the past two years, in two prisons: Her brother was alive. She burst into tears, not the first time that day. She grabbed his hand.
“I didn’t want to let go, because he felt like a part of me and I was a part of him,” Yatsyna said. “I feel like he passed on a part of Oleh to me in that moment.”
Then there was Dobriev, who tumbled off the bus into his sisters like a little brother. “All right girls, I’m home,” he said. He could not eat the cake or the chocolates – before being able to eat such treats, he would need to be cleared by a doctor. But still, the sisters lit the candles, so he could make a wish and blow them out.
“What do I feel? I have no words to explain,” he said.
His sisters hugged him from both sides while he held the cake. They kissed his cheeks and wouldn’t let go. Palamarchuk (38), cried and stroked her little brother’s head. “Let’s go call them,” she said. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”
First, he called his mother: “Yes, Mom,” he said. “I’m home.” Then he pulled out a pack of Winstons, lit one and laughed. - This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
