Russia frees US Air Force vet in a prisoner swap with Ukraine

Several Russian and Ukrainian captives were exchanged for a US citizen on Wednesday, according to Ukrainian officials.

An American Air Force veteran from Rwanda named Suedi Murekezi was imprisoned in Russia in June and spent months there. According to information provided this week by his family to The Washington Post, Murekezi had been employed in the southern Kherson region of Ukraine's technology sector since 2018.

Sele Murekezi, Murekezi's brother, told The Post that his sibling had emigrated to the US as a youngster and had spent eight years in the Air Force before relocating to Ukraine and residing in the Kherson region.

Kherson, the first significant city to fall to Russian forces less than a week after the war started, was the first big city to remain in Ukraine after Russia invaded in February, according to the publication. Since then, Ukrainian soldiers have reclaimed the area.

The Russians accused Murekezi, who is not thought to have participated in the fighting, of belonging to the CIA and participating in pro-Ukrainian protests, he told ABC News on Wednesday. He claimed that the Russians tortured him for weeks while they imprisoned him in a basement in the southern Kherson district.

He claimed to have been detained in prison in the Donetsk People's Republic for three months after being transported closer to the Russian border. The Donetsk and Luhansk areas of Ukraine, collectively referred to as the Donbas, have been ruled by Russian rebels for eight years.

Murekezi met other Russian prisoners there, including two Americans who had offered to fight for Ukraine. He also met other Russian prisoners from the West. The two men, Andy Tai Huynh and Alex Drueke, who were freed in a prisoner swap in September, spoke of the appalling conditions they endured while being held captive.

Murekezi, who was left out of the September swap, told ABC that his captors battered and shocked him. After being eventually freed by the Russians, he informed the source that he felt "trapped" because he was effectively left stranded in the separatist-controlled regions because he did not have access to his US passport.

Through a phony referendum in September, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally seized four areas of Ukraine, including Donetsk and Luhansk.

Murekezi claimed that when jailed alongside his fellow American POWs, the Russians only provided them with limited food and water. He admitted to ABC that he was most excited about a peanut butter sandwich when he got home.

According to Murekezi's brother, who spoke to the Post, he thinks his brother will settle back in America after his tragedy. In the past, he had resided in Minnesota.

64 Ukrainian servicemen and the bodies of four fallen soldiers were also included in the prisoner swap, according to a tweet sent on Wednesday by Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine's presidential office.

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