A celebrated Ukrainian medic whose footage was smuggled out of the besieged city of Mariupol by an Associated Press team was freed by Russian forces on Friday, three months after she was taken captive on the streets of the city.Yuliia Paievska is known in Ukraine as Taira, a nickname she chose in the World of Warcraft video game. Using a body camera, she recorded 256 gigabytes of her team’s efforts over two weeks to save the wounded, including both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.She transferred the clips to an Associated Press team, the last international journalists in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, one of whom fled with it embedded in a tampon on March 15. Taira and a colleague were taken prisoner by Russian forces on March 16, the same day a Russian airstrike hit a theater in the city center, killing around 600 people, according to an Associated Press investigation.“It was such a great sense of relief. Those sound like such ordinary words, and I don't even know what to say,” her husband, Vadim Puzanov, told The Associated Press late Friday, breathing deeply to contain his emotion. Puzanov said he spoke by phone with Taira, who was en route to a Kyiv hospital, and feared for her health.Initially the family had kept quiet, hoping negotiations would take their course. But The Associated Press spoke with 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 gratitude for the coverage, which showed Taira was trying to save Russian soldiers as well as Ukrainian civilians.In a short video posted Saturday on Telegram, Taira thanked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his efforts to get her released. Addressing Ukrainians still held by Russia, with a catch in her voice, she said: “I know that everything will work out and we will all be home as I am now.”Zelenskyy had announced Taira's release in a national address.“I'm grateful to everyone who worked for this result. Taira is already home. We will keep working 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 working for the nationalist Azov Regiment, in line with Moscow’s narrative that it is attempting to “denazify” Ukraine. But the AP found no such evidence, and friends and colleagues said she had no links to Azov, which made a last stand in a Mariupol steel plant before hundreds of its fighters were captured or killed.The footage itself is a visceral testament to her efforts to save the wounded on both sides.A clip recorded on March 10 shows two Russian soldiers taken roughly out of an ambulance by a Ukrainian soldier. One is in a wheelchair. The other is on his knees, hands bound behind his back, with an obvious leg injury. Their eyes are covered by winter hats, and they wear white armbands.A Ukrainian soldier curses at one of them. “Calm down, calm down,” Taira tells him.A woman asks her, “Are you going to treat the Russians?”“They will not be as kind to us,” she replies. “But I couldn’t do otherwise. They are prisoners of war.”Taira was a member of the Ukraine Invictus Games for military veterans, where she was set to compete in archery and swimming. Invictus said she was a military medic from 2018 to 2020 but had since been demobilized.She received the body camera in 2021 to film for a Netflix documentary series on inspirational figures being produced by Britain’s Prince Harry, who founded the Invictus Games. But when Russian forces invaded, she used it to shoot scenes of injured civilians and soldiers instead.

Video above: Zelenskyy visits retaken city of IziumRussian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy are each courting major allies on Thursday, seeking to prop up their efforts in a war whose fortunes have tilted toward Ukraine in recent days.In Uzbekistan's ancient Samarkand, Putin was hoping to break through his international isolation and further cement his ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a geopolitical alliance increasingly seen as potent counterweight to the Western powers.Putin and Xi were due to meet one-on-one and discuss Ukraine, according to the Russian president's foreign affairs adviser.In Kyiv, Zelenskyy was shrugging off a traffic collision the previous night that left him with no major injuries, officials said. He met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who once more showed full commitment to Ukraine's cause.Von der Leyen said she would address "how to continue getting our economies and people closer while Ukraine progresses towards accession" to the European Union, which is likely still years away in even the best of circumstances.In a sign of further EU commitment, the European Parliament completed the drawn-out political process of a 5 billion-euro preferential loan to Ukraine, the key part of a 9 billion-euro package of aid to offset the cost of war.In Germany, the EU's economic powerhouse, the foreign minister was pressuring Chancellor Olaf Scholz to decide soon to supply Ukraine with versatile tanks while the war momentum was with Kyiv.Germany has been hesitant on such moves for long, but Annalena Baerbock said that "in the decisive phase that Ukraine currently finds itself, I also don't believe that it's a decision which can be delayed for long."While Russian forces in some areas are increasingly being pushed back toward the border, Russia is still striking from behind the front line. Ukrainian officials said Russian missiles kept hitting the dam of the reservoir close to Zelenskyy's birthplace, Kryvyi Rih, on Thursday, The damage flooded over 100 homes. Efforts were underway to contain more spillage and authorities urged citizens to take shelter as strikes continued.The attack so close to his roots angered Zelenskyy, who said the strikes had no military value."In fact, hitting hundreds of thousands of ordinary civilians is another reason why Russia will lose," he said in his nightly address late Wednesday.The presidential office said that Russian shelling of seven Ukrainian regions over the past 24 hours killed at least two civilians and wounded 14.Zelenskyy himself remained in a buoyant mood, saying that almost 400 settlements had been retaken in less that a week of fighting."It was an unprecedented movement of our warriors — Ukrainians once again managed to do what many considered impossible," he said.Zelenskyy is expected to ask for more Western military material, which has been essential in driving the counteroffensive, and request even harsher sanctions against Moscow as the war approaches the seven-month mark.Despite the renewed Ukrainian vigor on the battlefield and the first rumblings of criticism at home, Putin is staying steadfast with his determination to fully subdue Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.After a phone call with Putin earlier in the week, Scholz said that "unfortunately, I cannot tell you that the realization has grown over there by now that this was a mistake to start this war.""There has been no indication that new attitudes are emerging there now," he added.