Ukrainian journalists Dmytro Khyliuk and Mark Kaliush were brought back to Ukraine as part of a prisoner-of-war exchange on 24 August. Khyliuk, a journalist for the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, was abducted in Kyiv Oblast in March 2022, while Kaliush is from the temporarily occupied city of Melitopol.

Source:President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War; Detector Media, a Ukrainian media monitoring outlet

Quote from Zelenskyy: "We are bringing home journalist Dmytro Khyliuk, who was abducted in the Kyiv region in March 2022. At last, he is home, in Ukraine."

Details:Journalist Mark Kaliush was also released alongside Khyliuk, the Coordination Headquarters said.

As Detector Media reported earlier, Kaliush is one of the administrators of the Telegram channels RIA-Melitopol and Melitopol is Ukraine, who was detained by Russian forces on 20 August 2023 in Melitopol.

Previously:In June 2025, a Ukrainian serviceman freed from Russian captivity – a soldier from the 36th Marine Brigade – said he had seen UNIAN correspondent Dmytro Khyliuk in early May 2025 in Penal Colony No. 7 in the settlement of Pakino, Russia's Vladimir Oblast. He stated that the journalist’s condition was very concerning.

One of the former prisoners who spent a year in a cell with Khyliuk said the journalist was unrecognisable – he weighed no more than 45 kg.

Background:

• Khyliuk was abducted by Russian troops on 3 March 2022 near his home in the village of Kozarovychi in Kyiv Oblast. He was then taken via Belarus to Novozybkov, Bryansk Oblast, where most civilians captured in Kyiv Oblast during the occupation were held. 
• On 9 July 2024, Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a briefing that Ukraine had unofficial information about Khyliuk’s whereabouts. 
• In April 2025, Ukrainian journalists and media figures called on the authorities to exchange the detained Russian "political expert" Kirill Molchanov, a propagandist from the circle of Putin’s close friend Viktor Medvedchuk [a former Ukrainian MP and businessman deprived of Ukrainian citizenship – ed.], for Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khyliuk, who has been in Russian captivity for more than three years.

Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon !