Four soldiers evacuated to Odesa from occupied territory

The Ukrainian military evacuated a marine, three soldiers of the National Guard of Ukraine and a medical worker who had been helping to hide wounded defenders in a hospital for more than three years from the occupied territory.

This was announced by the Commander of the Ukrainian Navy Oleksiy Neizhpapa.

According to him, the Presidential Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Servicemen and Members of Their Families Olha Reshetylova received information that the twin brother of a recently exchanged serviceman of the Navy Marine Corps was seriously wounded in the course of hostilities in eastern Ukraine in 2022 and was hospitalized and hidden from Russian security forces thanks to caring doctors.

After receiving this information, Oleksiy Neizhpapa decided to launch special evacuation measures. Later, it turned out that together with his twin brother, there were three other servicemen of the National Guard of Ukraine in the hospital who had been forced to hide there for more than three years.

The operation was planned and divided into several stages, taking into account the illegal status of all the persons, the high activity of hostilities, which was complicated by intensified filtration measures by the Russian special services.

On August 14, Ukraine conducted another exchange with Russia, which resulted in the return of both military personnel and civilians held by the Russians. Among those released were 51 civilians. Among the released civilians were men and women, including political prisoners and doctors. Some of them had been in captivity since 2014-2017. The oldest of the released civilians was 74 years old. All of them had acute illnesses and needed medical care.

Кирило Бойко