A Ukrainian couple who joined the army to protect the city and were later captured by invading Russian forces are reunited and plan to marry after the groom recovers.
Ilya Muzyka, 29, and Alina Panina, 27, were protecting Mariupol in southern Ukraine when Muzyka was captured on April 12, 2022, and her fiance was also arrested a month later. He was taken away with his platoon.
After nearly a year apart and neither knowing what had happened, the couple was released and reunited in Kiev, where Muzyka slowly recovered from malnutrition.
“I was overwhelmed with emotions and was beside myself. We had been waiting for a long time to talk, to hug each other, to talk,” Panina told Reuters about the reunion.
“We were very happy.”
The two first met through work in 2019, when Mujika and Panina were both working as security guards in Mariupol. Eventually, they were assigned to the city’s busy commercial port as dog trainers, inspecting cargo alongside their spaniels Jesse and Sonia.
The couple lived an idyllic life in the bustling city with their two dogs until Russia invaded in February 2022, making Mariupol the first target of Kremlin forces.
Like many city dwellers, Mujika and Panina joined the army and were deployed to protect Mariupol’s Azovmash factory, where they took part in some of the bloodiest battles of the early war.
When Panina said goodbye to her partner on April 10, moving to protect the city’s large Azovstal Steel Works, she never imagined they would be separated for nearly a year. It wasn’t.
Two days after Panina and her two dogs were deployed, Mujika’s unit was captured by Russian forces, who launched an unstoppable attack on the steel factory where she was stationed.
By May 17, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ordered Azovstal’s forces to surrender, and Panina was separated from her dog and taken prisoner.
“When they took me to Russia, I passed by where the dogs were kept and the dogs barked as I was being chased away. That was the last time I heard it.” she recalled.
Mujika said that while he was being held by the Russians, “I didn’t know if I had been in captivity or if I was still in captivity.”
“I’ve been thinking about it so much that I’ve lost my mind,” he added. “I must have put her in my head a thousand times.”
Panina said he was forced to relocate several times in Russia and occupied Ukraine, and described his treatment as a prisoner of war as “harsh.”
She also recalled that her captors had lied to her, claiming that Ukraine had already lost the war and was divided between Moscow and Europe.
She was eventually released in October 2022 as part of a regular prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Mujika said she lost weight because she was not given proper food during her long term captivity in a Russian prison camp.
Border Patrol would not release him until January 3, 2023, when he was reunited with his family and informed that his fiancée had been released three months earlier.
Musica and Panina were scheduled to marry in March 2022, but had to postpone the wedding until he fully recovered.
For now, the two are having a great time working as customs agents in the western city of Lutsk with Panina and her new spaniel, Roxy.
with post wire
