Protesters at US embassy in Kyiv urge freedom for POWs

KYIV: Protesters rallied outside the US embassy in Kyiv on Thursday to bring attention to the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war and ensure their inclusion in any deal to stop the conflict with Russia.

Kateryna Buhutska was one of around 200 people at the protest, holding a picture of her son before he was taken prisoner in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

“I realise that the US is a country that has a lot of influence, a lot depends on it. That’s why we want to ask it to help us bring our people home,” 46-year-old Buhutska said.

The US had been Ukraine’s biggest backer until President Donald Trump initiated a complete shift in his country’s foreign policy and halted US support to Ukraine.

Despite Trump’s U-turn, Buhutska and others in the crowd believed Washington could help them.

“I don’t understand what is happening in the world. We are scared of everything that is said in the news, but we are here to remind you that our boys, fathers, sons, husbands, must be returned,” she said.

The UN has warned of widespread and systematic torture in Russian prisons, with 95 percent of the released Ukrainian POWs providing accounts of torture or ill-treatment there.

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“I went through it myself and I know that every day there is hell, just hell,” said Oleksandr Demenko, who was freed from Russian captivity in early 2024.

He said “all hope is now on the US” to ensure his brothers-in-arms could also escape the “daily inhumane torture”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has proposed a complete exchange of all prisoners of war with Russia as a path towards ending the conflict.

Natalya Pisnya, 51, said he hoped to her husband Volodymyr Kondratenko could come home in such an “all for all” exchange.

He went missing almost a year ago – meaning he had either been killed in combat, or was taken prisoner by Russian forces.

“I believe he’s in captivity. I want them to exhange everyone for everyone. That’s all I believe in – that he is alive,” she said.