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Ukraine soldier's ordeal offers view into prisoner swaps

Ukrainian soldier Glib Stryzhko's mother knew he'd fallen into Russian hands but it wasn't until her gravely wounded 25-year-old son made a secret phone call to her that she found out where he was.

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RUSSIAN DENIALS Stryzhko was hit by a tank shell and buried under rubble on April 10 before his unit got him to a hospital, where he said he was taken prisoner. Now recovering from massive injuries to his pelvis, jaw and one eye, Stryzhko explained how his captors shuttled him and other prisoners around, first to Novoazovsk, near the Russian border. "We were lying there in the hospital and we weren't receiving any serious treatment," he said. He was there for about a week before being moved to a hospital in Donetsk, where, incredibly, he ended up getting access to a phone and called home. "During the first call he told us where he was," his mother said. Word of the call spread to other families of POWs and they started asking her to see if Stryzhko knew anything about their captive loved ones. He didn't.