Now he is with his family in his native Ivano-Frankivsk.
“It’s impossible to express all the feelings in words. Only yesterday finally got home. Now I am busy with usual home routine, slowly restoring documents and preparing for my birthday, which will be tomorrow,” the former political prisoner shared his emotions with the Association.

Around 3:40 a.m. on April 18, Mykola left the Russian Federation through the Georgian border. Shyptur hitched a ride to Tbilisi, where his friend met him. With transfers in Yerevan and Chisinau, Shyptur finally returned to his Motherland after 9 years in a russian colony.

‍“I was told at the Center that I would be able to get home only after the war was over, because there are no consular ties. At the same time, the Migration Service of the Russian Federation claimed that they would release me very soon, without specifying exact dates. These discrepancies made me very anxious, but one morning everything was quickly and suddenly resolved,” says Mykola.

As a reminder, Mykola Shyptur was detained on March 9, 2014 and imprisoned for participating in a pro-Ukrainian action on the occasion of the 200^th anniversary of T. Shevchenko’s birthday in Sevastopol. Torture was used to force Mykola to testify against himself. On March 7, 2023, Mykola was released due to the expiration of his sentence and spent more than two months in the Center for the Temporary Detention of Foreign Citizens in Rostov region.