Irina Krynina departed from Russia in September 2023, leaving behind her apartment in Krasnoyarsk, her car, and her job as an accountant. She packed her bags, took her two daughters, aged seven and ten, and set off for Ukraine to visit her partner Yevgeny Kovtkov in Ukraine. Kovtkov, who is not the biological father of her children, had been fighting for Russia against the Ukrainian army when he was captured.
She booked a flight to Turkey, flew from there to Moldova, and then journeyed on to Kyiv. She received logistical support from a helpline operated by Ukraine’s defense intelligence service, the HUR. Named “I Want to Live” (Khochu zhit), the helpline was originally set up for Russian soldiers opting to surrender. Krynina used the service to locate her partner, and travel to Ukraine to find him. She was the first in this war to attempt such a thing.
In an interview with DW, she said she had known very little about Ukraine until 2022, but had been against the annexation of Crimea back in 2014. But it was only in 2023, when her partner was sent to the Donetsk region to fight and was soon after taken prisoner that she started reading up about the war.
“When I realized what was really happening, I didn’t want to stay in Russia anymore,” Krynina said. “I was completely disappointed by the Russian state … I don’t want my family and children to be held responsible for the horror that is happening. That’s why I went to Ukraine to help.”
Upon arrival, Krynina faced disappointment. Her partner was not happy about her visit. In an online video published by a Ukrainian YouTuber, the man quietly asks: “Ira, why?” He comes across as tense and confused.
While Krynina wants to stay in Ukraine for the time being, Kovtkov is waiting for a prisoner exchange to return to Russia. Today, they are no longer a pair. “I didn’t recognize Yevgeny,” she said. “He has changed a lot, he is cold, withdrawn and anxious. War and imprisonment change people a lot.”
What is ‘Our Way Out’?
In Ukraine, Krynina founded the project “Our Way Out,” which enables relatives of Russian prisoners of war to contact them. The initiative was joined by the well-known Russian journalist Viktoria Ivleva, who has been campaigning for Ukraine since 2014 and moved to Kyiv in March 2022.
Krynina visits prisoners in camps, records conversations with them, delivers parcels and enables them to make phone calls. The video conversations also serve as proof to prisoners’ relatives that they are in captivity, she says, adding that it is difficult to be recognized as a prisoner of war in Russia.
Many captured soldiers are often written off as missing, dead, or deserters. Others are still listed as active soldiers, although they cannot be contacted. Krynina says that even Russian conscription offices are now secretly recommending that relatives of prisoners of war contact the project.
Its YouTube channel has over 100,000 subscribers and features hundreds of interviews with prisoners who talk about their former lives, why they signed up with the Russian army, and how they were captured.
It also features conversations with relatives of Russians who were sent back to the fight in Ukraine after being returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange. Krynina advises those affected to contact journalists and lawyers. “If a prisoner of war does not fight for his rights, does not demand anything, then the state simply sends him back to war,” she explains.
Despite the risk of former prisoners being sent to fight on Ukrainian soil once again, Krynina wants to continue helping Russian prisoners of war return home. “Every returned Russian also means a returned Ukrainian,” she says. “The exchange must continue.”
‘Everyone is tired of this war’
When Krynina first arrived, Petro Yatsenko from the Ukrainian military’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War told the news platform Detector Media that she also played a role in “helping Ukraine in the information war against Russia.”
Krynina says she aims to show “Russians what is really going on.” To do this, she travels to the sites of Russian attacks and records videos. She believes that her approach works: “Many of those who are close to someone on the front, I’d say 99%, want all this to stop. Everyone is tired of this war, and no one understands why it is still going on.”
Krynina is convinced that her videos are one of the reasons why her project was placed on Russia’s “foreign agents” blacklist in July 2025. When asked by DW whether she feels guilty for the crimes that Russians have committed in this war, she said: “I can’t understand why they’re shooting. It’s very hard for me to bear.”
How is she doing in Ukraine?
Many Russians condemn Krynina’s move to Ukraine, but Ukrainians also have mixed feelings about her. In spring 2025, a post by a customer of a Kyiv fitness club went viral on Facebook. She met Krynina while exercising and was outraged that a Russian citizen was allowed to move freely in Ukraine. Some comments urged the fitness club to deny Krynina access, while others pointed out that she was in the country legally.
Krynina says that at first, she feared she would be condemned for speaking Russian, but adds that this not been the case so far. These days, she rents an apartment in Kyiv and her daughters attend a Ukrainian school. She is supported by her ex-husband and works as an accountant on the side. Her work for Our Way Out is voluntary.
She tells DW that she hopes to return to a “free Russia” one day, but adds that relations between Russians and Ukrainians will never be the same again.
“Russia has brought a lot of suffering and hardship to the Ukrainian people. I think the Russians will feel guilty, but they won’t be able to make amends. I don’t know if the Ukrainians will be able to forgive the Russians for what they have done. It will be generations before we can even think about peace,” she says.
This article was originally written in Ukranian.
