An officer of the SSU with the call sign ‘Buryi’ spoke about Mariupol’s defence, his combat missions at Azovstal and 123 days of russian captivity in solitary confinement in Lefortovo prison in moscow. He returned home on September 21 as a result of PoW exchange. Buryi is the only SSU officer who survived at Azovstal.

Today he is back on duty to work for Ukraine’s victory and has told the 1+1 TV channel about his plans for the future.

‘Until the war is over, I consider it my duty to speed up its end with our victory. I swore an oath of allegiance. Therefore, I will defend the country, I will protect our citizens to the last,’ Buryi emphasized.

He says that immediately after the start of the full-scale invasion, he continued to work in Mariupol, which was being destroyed by russians block after block. When the left bank of the city was almost completely razed to the ground, Buryi together with two other officers from the SSU Main Office in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, ‘Husar’ and ‘Domakha’, eventually moved to Azovstal.

One of the key tasks of SSU officers was to support the counterintelligence regime and replenish the so-called ‘exchange fund’.

‘In order not to expose civilians to danger, we lived in different premises of Azovstal, but we constantly contacted and helped them... When I saw the children’s tears, it was a powerful motivation to go upstairs and destroy the enemy,’ Buryi recollects.

He had to go through the loss of both sworn brothers after a powerful explosion at Azovstal, and then - through imprisonment in Olenivka and Lefortovo.

True to his oath, he is back in the ranks and wears the chevrons that he received as a gift from his senior colleague at the beginning of the war. The SSU Acting Head Vasyl Maliuk returned these chevrons to Buryi on the day of the exchange.

Read more about what kept people going in one of the hottest spots of this war in the full version of the interview.

The SSU reminds that the Joint Center for Search and Liberation of PoWs is operating in Ukraine. Its task is to find and return home every Ukrainian who was captured or went missing.

Its phone numbers are +38 067 650 83 32 and +38 098 087 36 01.