The Azov POWs: Moscow's bargaining chip against Kyiv

Olena Ishchenko was torn between despair and rage as she read over the results of an autopsy on her husband Oleksandr, a Ukrainian soldier who died in Russian captivity.

Moscow claimed he died from heart problems, but an analysis of his corpse, repatriated to Ukraine, found that he died after suffering multiple rib fractures and blunt chest trauma.

"I want God to punish everyone who touched him, who hurt him with their little hands and feet," Ishchenko said.

Part of Ukraine's Azov brigade, Oleksandr was one of hundreds captured by Russian troops after the siege of Mariupol at the start of the war -- and who are being held as bargaining chips by Moscow.

Azov's fate had long been linked to Mariupol, a southern Ukrainian city on the Azov Sea that lent the group its name.

In 2014, the then-nascent ultranationalist battalion earned its stripes by recapturing Mariupol after Russian-backed separatists briefly seized it.

Azov then expanded into the regular army, and in 2022 gained country-wide recognition fighting for Mariupol's steelworks, Azovstal.

Most of the Azov fighters captured around the siege are still in captivity, as their totemic status in Ukraine turned them into a political tool for Russia, which accuses them of "neo-nazism".

- 'Terrible flame' -

After his capture, Oleksandr was put on trial and shown on Russian state TV looking emaciated.

His wife pleaded with Ukrainian authorities to negotiate the release of Oleksandr, the father of her daughter.

"Let's hope he will hold on," she recalled being told.

"Well, he didn't. And now what should I do? Go and kill somebody? How can I keep living?"

Around 230 of the 900 Azov soldiers captured in Mariupol have been released, though none since May 2023, said Petro Yatsenko from Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

"We want them back as soon as possible, but Russia never wants to give us these Mariupol defenders back," Yatsenko said.

He said he believed Moscow was withholding the famed fighters in an attempt to divide Ukraine, where some accuse the authorities of abandoning the Azov fighters.

"Free Azov" slogans abound in Kyiv, from graffiti to banners on government buildings and in the trendy cafes that used to keep nationalist groups at a distance.

"Until 2022 people didn't know what Azov was, many people were ignorant. But the war woke many people up," said 26-year-old Kristina Iniieu, who works in the creative industry.
 
Donning emoji necklaces, she stood among hundreds gathered in the Kyiv summer heat at a weekly Free Azov protest, where teenagers in 90s revival streetwear mixed with others in fitted khaki uniforms.

Young women waving Free Azov banners leaned out of cars circling a roundabout.

"For Russians, Azov is like a terrible flame, they are afraid of them, they hate them, they demonise them," Iniieu said, her voice barely audible over the honking of car horns from drivers taking part in the protest.

- 'Colossal request' -

Hopes for the release of Azov prisoners surged when Kyiv captured hundreds of Russian soldiers during an offensive on Russia's Kursk region launched in early August.

But the latest exchange, announced on August 24, included no Azov fighters, drawing scorn from some in the military.

"There is a colossal request from society for the return of those who in Mariupol in 2022 did everything to ensure that Ukraine continued to exist," Azov commander Denys Prokopenko said on social media.

But the decision is in Moscow's hands -- and the propaganda value of the fighters further complicates their release.

Moscow has for years lambasted Azov with accusations of "neo-nazism" that the brigade denies.

The allegations led to a decade-long US weapons ban that was lifted in June.

Moscow still uses show trials of Azov fighters to highlight the unit's far-right roots and to seek to justify its claims that it invaded to "denazify" Ukraine.

It does so despite the Geneva Conventions that state captured fighters cannot be tried for taking part in armed combat, and should not be subjected to "public curiosity" such as having prisoners be paraded.

- 'Tortured' -

Tamara Koryagina said she barely recognised her husband, Serhii Mykhaylenko, in footage published on a Russian website that showed him "confessing" to crimes.

"I was crying a lot because he's pale, thin, with empty eyes. I understood that he lived through a lot and that he was tortured," the 24-year-old told AFP in Kyiv.

Mykhaylenko was sentenced to life imprisonment in Siberia.

Koryagina has been left scrolling through Russian websites for proof he is still alive, amid widespread reports of mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners.

The testimonies come from released prisoners themselves, who often come back to Ukraine looking gaunt and scarred.

Every single freed Ukrainian POW recently interviewed by the United Nations reported torture in Russian captivity, "from brutal beatings to prolonged stress positions, to electric shocks on genitals and to dog attacks".

Russia's federal penitentiary service and the defence ministry did not respond to questions about the treatment of Ukrainian POWs.

Holding on to the belief she will see her husband again, Koryagina, a Mariupol native, thought back to happier times strolling along the city's pier.

They had married quickly, and she dreams of a lavish celebration on the seashore.

"We liked to walk there all the time, there were lots of people, lots of kisses, a lot of peace," she said.