TALLINN, Estonia (AP) – A prominent Ukrainian doctor whose videos were smuggled from the besieged city of Mariupol by an Associated Press team was released by Russian forces on Friday, three months after he was taken prisoner on the city streets.
Yuliia Paievska is known in Ukraine as Taira, a nickname she chose in the video game World of Warcraft. Using a body camera, she recorded 256 gigabytes of her team’s efforts in two weeks to rescue the wounded, including both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.
He transferred the clips to a group of the Associated Press, the last international journalists in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, one of whom left with the tampon on March 15. Taira and a colleague were taken prisoner by Russian forces on March 16. The same day, a Russian airstrike hit a theater in the city center, killing about 600 people, according to an Associated Press investigation.
“It simply came to our notice then. “These sounds like ordinary words, and I do not even know what to say,” her husband, Vadim Puzanov, told the Associated Press late Friday, taking a deep breath to contain his emotion. Puzanov said he spoke by telephone with Tyra, who was going to a Kiev hospital, and feared for her health.
At first the family was silent, hoping that the negotiations would get in the way. However, the Associated Press spoke to him before releasing the clandestine videos, which eventually had millions of viewers around the world, including some of the largest networks in Europe and the United States. Puzanov expressed gratitude for the cover, which showed that Tyra was trying to save Russian soldiers as well as Ukrainian civilians.
In a short video posted on the Telegram on Saturday, Taira thanked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his efforts to secure her release. “I know everything will go well and we will all be home as I am now,” she told the Ukrainians, who are still being held captive by Russia.
Zelenskyy had announced Taira’s release in a national speech.
“I am grateful to all those who worked for this result. Taira is already home. “We will continue to work to free everyone,” he said.
Hundreds of prominent Ukrainians have been abducted or taken prisoner, including local officials, journalists, activists and human rights defenders.
Russia has accused Taira of working for the nationalist Azov regime, according to Moscow, which says it is trying to “denationalize” Ukraine. But the AP did not find such information and her friends and colleagues said she had no ties to Azov, who last stood at a Mariupol steel plant before hundreds of its fighters were arrested or killed.
The video itself is a compelling proof of her efforts to save the wounded on both sides.
A video recorded on March 10 shows two Russian soldiers getting out of an ambulance by a Ukrainian soldier. One is in a wheelchair. The other is on his knees, with his hands tied behind his back, with obvious injuries to his leg. Their eyes are covered with winter hats and they wear white armbands.
A Ukrainian soldier curses one of them. “Calm down, calm down,” Taira tells him.
A woman asks her: “Will you treat the Russians?”
“They will not be so kind to us,” he replies. “But I could not do otherwise. “They are prisoners of war.”
Taira was a member of the Invictus Games in Ukraine for military veterans, where she was going to compete in archery and swimming. Invictus said she was a military doctor from 2018 to 2020, but had since been demobilized.
Received the body camera in 2021 to film a series of Netflix documentaries about inspirational figures produced by Britain’s Prince Harry, who founded Invictus Games. But when Russian forces invaded, he used it to shoot scenes of wounded civilians and soldiers.
