From: DW NEWS by Igor Burdyga
During more than three years of war with invading Russian forces, Ukraine has witnessed the creation of the largest women’s movement in the country’s history.
Mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, aunts and fiancees have banded together by the thousands to find missing or imprisoned soldiers. The women have organized informal groups and associations that work with one another across the country.
Prisoner exchanges are strictly secretive. Journalists are never informed of the time and place of exchanges. Nor are the names and locations of hospitals that freed prisoners of war, or POWs, are taken to for medical exams after release made public.
Nevertheless, on this morning, several hundred civilians have gathered in the courtyard of a clinic in Chernihiv to await the arrival of a bus en route from the Russia–Ukraine border.
Nadia, a retiree from Khmelnytskyi, is looking for her son Oleksandr Image: Igor Burdyga/DW
Nadia, a retiree from Khmelnytskyi, hasn’t missed a prisoner exchange in over a year. Her 41-year-old son Oleksandr Kololyuk disappeared on the front near Bakhmut in February 2023.
“I search and hope,” says Nadia, who holds several pictures in her hand.
Everyone here has photos of sons, husbands, fathers or fiances, and they all want to have them broadcast on TV or printed in the paper.
Voice of Ukraine 