Lidia came for her son Andri, who is also a Mariupol defender. He just heard this morning that he was on the list. Previously, he only knew that he had been sentenced to 25 years in prison in Russia.
He hugged another person waiting behind the tape. They knew each other from meeting relatives of prisoners of war. They take care of each other.
Tatyana Afisova was also there, the mother of Pavel Afisov, an officer from Mariupol. “He doesn’t know we’re here,” he said. But he also said: ‘I still can’t believe he’s standing here like this.’
Night fell, the bus should have been there long ago. “All the other exchanges happened during the day,” said one distraught woman. A police spokesman came forward and said that the exchange that was to take place on the border of Ukraine and Belarus had been postponed.
