TALLINN, Estonia — A Ukrainian rescue worker who became famous for broadcasting the daily footage she captured in the besieged city of Mariupol, entrusted to a team of journalists from the Associated Press (AP) agency, has been freed by Russian forces Friday, three months after his capture on the streets of the city.
Yuliia Paievska is known in Ukraine by the nickname Taira which she used in the video game World of Warcraft. Using a body camera, she recorded 256 gigabytes of her volunteer rescue team’s two-week response to those injured since the invasion of Ukraine, including Russian soldiers.
She entrusted the images to the last team of international journalists still present in Mariupol, those from the Associated Press, one of whom managed to flee the scene on March 15 with these well-hidden images.
Taira and a colleague were taken prisoner the very next day by Russian forces, the same day a Russian airstrike hit a downtown theater, killing around 600 people, according to an AP investigation.
“It’s a big relief,” her husband, Vadim Puzanov, told The Associated Press Friday night, breathing deeply to contain his emotion.
He spoke on the phone with Taira, who was on her way to a hospital in Kyiv, and feared for her health.
The family had kept quiet, hoping negotiations would go ahead, but agency reporters were able to interview them before posting the smuggled-obtained videos that captured the attention of millions of viewers around the world, including on some of the largest networks in Europe and the United States. Mr. Puzanov expressed his gratitude for the media coverage, which showed that Taira was trying to save Russian soldiers as well as Ukrainian civilians.
It was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who announced Taira’s release in an address to the nation.
“I am grateful to everyone who worked for this result. Taira is already at home. We will continue to work to free everyone,” he stressed.
Hundreds of prominent Ukrainians have been abducted or captured, including local officials, journalists, activists and human rights defenders.
Russia has portrayed Taira as working for the nationalist Azov Battalion, in line with Moscow’s narrative that it is trying to “denazify” Ukraine. AP reporters found no such evidence, and her friends and colleagues say she had no connection to Azov, who took one last hold at a Mariupol steelworks before hundreds of his fighters be captured or killed.
In a video from March 10, we see a Ukrainian soldier hurling insults at an injured Russian soldier while we hear the woman asking him to calm down.
In response to a woman asking if she will heal the enemy, Taira replies that she can’t help it since they are “pows of war”.
Before volunteering as a first aider during the war in Ukraine, Taira was a member of Ukraine’s Invictus Games for military veterans, where she competed in archery and swimming. The organizers of Invictus presented her as a military nurse from 2018 to 2020.
She had received a body camera in 2021 to film a Netflix documentary series on the inspirational figures produced by Britain’s Prince Harry, who founded the Invictus Games. She used it when Russian forces invaded Ukraine to shoot scenes of civilians and wounded soldiers.
