Alina and Illia were taken prisoner by Russia during the defense of Mariupol in 2022. Until 2024, the couple did not see each other and knew nothing about each other. Fortunately, they survived and eventually met again in Ukraine on January 3, 2024.

Alina was released from captivity in October 2022, and since then she has been waiting for her beloved to return home. During this long period, there was no news from him.

"I remember his last words before we were captured. He said that we would go through whatever happened, but I had to hold on. And that he loved me. I just couldn't give up," Alina says.

On January 3, Ukraine released 213 soldiers and sergeants, 11 officers and six civilians. Among those released were 225 men and five women. This exchange was the first in six months and the largest since the beginning of the full-scale war.
It was on this day that Illia finally returned to Ukraine from Russian captivity.

Illia recounts:
"I hadn't heard or had any news about my parents or Alina, nothing at all... I prayed to God that Alina would be alive and in good health. I already thought she was gone. I had already, so to speak, buried her many times (in my mind).

I got off the bus. And all the time I was in captivity, I was thinking and knew the phone numbers by heart and who I would need to call first. When I got off the bus, I approached a person and asked for a phone. And I looked at the phone for three seconds and thought about how to tap it, as I had become unused to all this”.
Then Illia called his father, told him that he was alive and had returned from captivity and asked about Alina's fate.
"I was very afraid to hear from him that she was gone. I ask him, "Where is Alina?" And he says, "Alina, thank God, has been home for a year now"."