Mark Kaliush, administrator of the Telegram channel Melitopol Is Ukraine, who had been unlawfully detained and imprisoned by Russian forces in 2023, returned to Ukraine as part of a prisoner swap on August 24, reports the Coordination Headquarters for POW Treatment.
Mark Kaliush was detained alongside six of his colleagues, RIA Melitopol and Melitopol Is Ukraine administrators, in Melitopol on August 20, 2023. He was charged with involvement in a terrorist attack. However, later, according to Reporters Without Borders, a Russian court exempted him from criminal liability and sent him for compulsory psychiatric treatment for “schizophrenia” (diagnosis cannot be confirmed). He was likely institutionalized in Ukraine’s occupied territory or in the Rostov region of Russia.
As reported by the Institute of Mass Information, UNIAN journalist Dmytro Khyliuk, who had been kidnapped by Russian forces in Kyiv oblast in March 2022, returned to Ukraine on August 24 as well.
According to the Institute of Mass Information, at least 26 Ukrainian media workers remain imprisoned by Russia.