“Mum! I'm home”: 22-year-old Ukrainian soldier who swam across gulf to get to Azovstal returns from Russian captivity – photo

On 25 June, 90 Ukrainian defenders returned from Russian captivity. Among them is Vitalii Senchenko, a National Guard soldier from Kryvyi Rih who defended Mariupol in the spring of 2022 and was taken prisoner by the Russians while leaving the Azovstal steel plant. His mother, Oksana Latanska, founder of the NGO Steel Guard, has confirmed the soldier's return from captivity.

"Mum! I'm home, I'm in Ukraine! I've dreamed of hearing these words for so long!" Latanska said. "Hoping, believing, waiting, preparing.

But still they came as a surprise. Two years, one month and one week of enemy captivity after 86 hellish days defending Mariupol."

Latanska said she would be reunited with her son on 26 June.

Vitalii Senchenko returns from Russian captivityPhoto: Oksana Latanska On Facebook

Vitalii Senchenko had been serving in the Kryvyi Rih brigade of the National Guard under contract since September 2021. When the full-scale invasion began, he was on a routine rotation in Mariupol.

Latanska recalls contacting her son on 24 February 2022. He thought the outbreak of conflict with Russia was local.

"They had no way to follow the news there because there was already fighting going on. But it seemed to them that it was an escalation of the conflict in Donbas.

They didn't know about Hostomel, Chernihiv, Sumy Oblast, about the [Russians'] attempt to break through to Kyiv. They didn't know until later on that Kryvyi Rih was hit on the first day of the war. And it was an additional shock for them that it [the combat action - ed.] wasn't just there [in Donbas]: it was everywhere.

But then all hell broke loose for them," Latanska said. In April 2022, Vitalii swam across the Taganrog Gulf to get to Azovstal and defend it. "I remember how I had my phone in my hands the whole time, waiting for at least a short message, at least one word: "Alive".

And then my son's phone stopped working. 'The number you are calling is out of range'... After a week of uncertainty, I received a message from my son from an unknown number. I still pray for the guy whose phone these messages came from, and I believe he is alive," the soldier's mother wrote on Facebook.

Vitalii, along with other Ukrainian defenders, was taken prisoner by the Russians when they left Azovstal on the orders of the Ukrainian command. He spent more than two years in Russian prisons after leaving Mariupol. He returned home along with 17 other residents of Kryvyi Rih.

This is the 53rd prisoner swap since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. A total of 3,300 Ukrainians have been released to date. Mariana Mamonova, a Mariupol defender who was imprisoned by the Russians while pregnant and released on 22 September 2022, has established her own humanitarian foundation.

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