The Ukrainian Navy’s Angels special reconnaissance unit evacuated a man from the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia region who had been helping the Ukrainian Defense Forces.
The unit announced this on its Facebook account.
In late March 2026, representatives of the Ukrainian Defense Forces asked Navy Commander Vice Admiral Oleksii Neizhpapa to arrange the evacuation of a Ukrainian civilian.
The man’s life was at risk: during the occupation, he had helped rescue Ukrainian soldiers and passed along valuable intelligence.
He was detained by the Russian forces and later released, but left without documents and under constant surveillance by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation and representatives of the occupation “commandant’s office.”
This made any movement extremely difficult for the man and ruled out any attempt to leave the temporarily occupied territory on his own.
On the orders of the Navy commander, soldiers of the Angels unit planned and carried out a special operation.
The intelligence officers successfully escorted the man from the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
In a video released by the Navy, they shared details of the operation, explaining that Serhii’s family (his real name is withheld for security reasons) had managed to leave the occupied territories earlier, while he remained behind.
In August 2022, he was detained by officers of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation and tortured. He was later sentenced to five years and three months in prison. He was eventually released, but Russian forces continued to keep him under surveillance.
The footage shows that Ukrainian intelligence officers evacuated the man by boat across the Dnipro River. Afterward, Serhii was placed on a train and reunited with his family.
This is not the only special operation carried out by the Angels unit of the Ukrainian Navy. For example, last October, they managed to free a veteran of the Armed Forces and a National Guard serviceman who had been held in captivity and forced labor in the temporarily occupied territory for more than three years.
