On April 10, a large exchange of prisoners of war was held. Among the released Ukrainian defenders was Valeriia Karpylenko with the call sign Nava. She volunteered at the front when the Russian military attacked Ukraine.
For several months, a woman defended the Ukrainian city on an equal footing with the professional military. Then, together with all the defenders of Azovstal in Mariupol, surrendered. For almost a year, the woman was in the hands of the Russian invaders. It's difficult to imagine what a woman in captivity went through.
Because Nava has spent her whole life in Azovstal. During the defence of Mariupol, Valeriia Karpylenko married military Andrii Subotin nicknamed Beard. On May 5 – the day of the creation of a separate special group Azov – the couple married in the basement of a factory surrounded by the sea and Russian invaders. They exchanged vows and rings made of tinfoil. But 3 days later, the armed forces of the Russian Federation stormed the factory and killed Nava's husband. A few weeks later, she surrendered to captivity.
Now the hero of Mariupol in her homeland. She was met with flowers and the flag of Ukraine.
