“I haven’t been in contact with my husband lately and haven’t got any information about him,” said Anna, wife of Anton, a Marine who was seriously injured during the Russian siege at the Mariupol factory. Eve Leva said.
It’s been over a month since she talked to him.
“The last time we spoke was April 13, and then the brother in his arm sent me a text that he was still alive,” Ivleva said.
Ukrainian government officials are in contact, but she told CNN that she “has no information” about where and under what conditions the azovstal fighter is stored.
Still, she wants her husband to be still alive, even if she is in captivity.
“We all, the Marines’ families, wives and mothers, stick to each other. We are in constant contact 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” she said. “We always exchange available news. We are like a family.”
After a long siege, the Ukrainian port city Mariupol was put under full Russian control earlier this month by the surrender of Azovstal, the last fort of Ukrainian defense.
Russian national propaganda has accused Azovstal’s defenders of being “Nazis” and raised serious concerns about how they would be treated as prisoners of war.
Another woman named Yana (whose boyfriend was a Marine in Azovstal) spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
“I haven’t heard anything from him or about him,” she said. “The last time we contacted was May 11th.”
She said the Ukrainian government did not provide information about where her boyfriend was.
“My boyfriend’s mother contacted me [the International Committee of the Red Cross]”When can’t I remember exactly?” She said.
Since May 17, the ICRC has been involved in the registration of combatants leaving the Azovstali factory to help prisoners of war stay in touch with their families. This organization has been active in Ukraine since 2014, when the war in the Donbus region of Ukraine began.
Another wife of Tetiana, an advocate of Azovstal, said her husband was able to call her from an unknown number after surrender, and some of his associates were in the separatist-dominated Donetsk region. He said he was detained in the town. CNN agreed not to report her name for the same reason.
“His voice was calm and confident,” she said. “He said they were okay in keeping. He said they might be allowed to receive some packages.”
Tetiana said she talked to her husband for about 10 minutes and her husband said he would try to call again.
But since then she hasn’t heard anything either.
“That’s it. There’s no more phone calls or news,” she said.
Source: www.cnn.com
