Russian women are fighting for a general exchange of prisoners, they are also looking for help in the Czech Republic

Paradoxically, the idea came from three Russian women who took refuge in Ukraine to be closer to their captured husbands and are looking for help wherever they can. In their native Russia, their appeals are not heard much, but they have already found support from the Ukrainian army command, from the Ukrainian Orthodox clergy, as well as from Pope Francis, and they are looking for it in the Czech Republic as well.

And they have already obtained it, for example, from a part of the Czech Orthodox Church. “We have condemned the war in Ukraine, we help Ukrainian refugees, we make collections and we also support this initiative to exchange all prisoners,” Bishop Izaiáš of the Olomouc-Brno Orthodox Eparchy told Novinkám.

The organization Our Way Out (Our Way Out) was founded in Kyiv last year by Irina Kryninova, Olga Rakovova, who fled to Ukraine, where they have captured men, and journalist and human rights activist Viktoria Ivlevova, who has been in Ukraine since 2014, when occupation of Crimea.

“This war is suffering for mothers and women, both here in Ukraine, whose sons and men die defending their country, and for women and mothers in Russia, who for some reason send their sons to this terrible war,” she said last year at the launch organization Olga Rakova. Their initiative was immediately joined by a number of Ukrainian women who miss their captured husbands, as well as Ukrainian Orthodox priests.

In the spring, they managed to contact the Vatican and Pope Francis, who in his traditional Easter speech (Urbi et Orbi) appealed to the warring parties to proceed with the exchange of prisoners. “I call for respect for the principles of international law and I wish for a general exchange of all prisoners between Russia and Ukraine: all for all,” the Pope said.

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According to Ukrainian Orthodox priest Vitaly Porovchuk, who participated in the prisoner exchange initiative, Francis’s call stirred public opinion in Russia as well. “And she partly encouraged the Russian command to dialogue, but it is very complicated and there is no result yet,” Porovčuk told Novinkám.

The women from the organization Our Return drew attention to the fact that the Russian side, in the previous exchanges, mostly demanded the handover of officers, experts and soldiers capable of combat, which it would be able to return to the front. “Many seriously wounded Russian prisoners of war who need rehabilitation and expensive treatment but do not request exchange,” they said. Therefore, according to them, it would be good to exchange all for all.

The last exchange mediated by the United Arab Emirates, when one hundred Russians were exchanged for one hundred Ukrainians, took place in February this year. Porovchuk and his colleagues are trying to galvanize Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches around the world to support their initiative and appeal to Russia to agree to the exchange.

They also asked the Russian Orthodox Church, but so far no response. “We wrote to them and are waiting for an answer, but unfortunately in Russia there is a tsar-pope system and the church there does what the political leadership wants,” Porovchuk added.

At the end of April, Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Sviatoslav Shevchuk called on Russia to at least exchange female soldiers, doctors and military chaplains, of whom, according to Shevchuk, there are around ten in Russian captivity.

“We know that there are now about eight thousand Ukrainian soldiers and 1,600 civilians in hellish conditions in Russian captivity. Let’s do everything in our power to make the exchange of ‘all for all’ step by step an Easter reality,” said Ševchuk.

The number of captured Russian soldiers is unknown, according to the organization Our Return, there are slightly fewer of them in Ukraine than in Russia.

Porovchuk drew attention to the fact that, in addition to military chaplains, there are also civilian priests and clergy in Russian prisons. For example, already in February 2022, when the Russians occupied the city of Berdyansk, located on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov, two Redemptorist priests – Ivan Levytský and Bohdan Heleta – were captured here and accused of fabricated crimes. “They were unjustly imprisoned and we have information that they are still being tortured,” Porovchuk noted. He added that unlike the Ukrainian prison camps, Russia does not comply with the Geneva Convention and does not treat prisoners humanely. “In Russian prison camps and prisons, they torture prisoners and do not give prisoners the opportunity to communicate with their relatives or receive packages,” noted the Ukrainian priest. He added that Russian prisoners have the opportunity not only to correspond with their loved ones, but also to talk on the phone.

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