She gave the clips to a team from the Associated Press, the last international journalists in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, one of whom fled with it on March 15, embedded in a tampon.
“It was such a great sense of relief. It sounds like such ordinary words and I don’t even know what to say,” her husband Vadim Puzanov told The Associated Press late Friday, taking a deep breath to contain his emotions. Puzanov said he spoke to Taira on the phone, who was on her way to a Kiev hospital and feared for her health.
At first the family remained silent, hoping that the negotiations would take their course. But The Associated Press spoke to him before releasing the smuggled videos, which ultimately had millions of viewers around the world, including on some of the biggest networks in Europe and the United States.
Puzanov expressed his gratitude for the coverage showing Taira trying to save both Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the release of Taira in a national address.
“I am grateful to everyone who worked towards this result. Taira is already at home. We will continue to work to free everyone,” he said.
Hundreds of prominent Ukrainians have been kidnapped or captured, including local officials, journalists, activists and human rights defenders.
Russia portrayed Taira as an operative in the nationalist Azov Battalion, consistent with Moscow’s narrative that it was trying to “denazify” Ukraine. But the AP found no such evidence, and friends and colleagues said it had no ties to Azov, which put up a last-ditch stand at a Mariupol steel mill before hundreds of its fighters were captured or killed.
The footage itself is a visceral testament to their efforts to save the wounded on both sides.
A clip taken on March 10 shows two Russian soldiers being roughly pulled from an ambulance by a Ukrainian soldier. One is in a wheelchair. The other is on his knees, hands tied behind his back, with an apparent leg injury. Their eyes are covered with winter hats and they wear white armbands.
Evacuee emotionally says goodbye to his dog
A Ukrainian soldier insults one of them. “Calm down, calm down,” Taira tells him.
A woman asks her: “Will you treat the Russians?”
“They won’t be so kind to us,” she replies. “But I couldn’t help it. They are prisoners of war.”
Taira was a member of Ukraine’s Invictus Games for military veterans, where she was scheduled to compete in archery and swimming. Invictus said she was a military medic from 2018 to 2020 but has since been demobilized.
She received the body camera in 2021 to film for a Netflix documentary series about inspirational characters produced by Prince Harry, who founded the Invictus Games. But when Russian troops invaded, she used it to shoot scenes with injured civilians and soldiers instead.