Ukrainian mother's joy after phone call with son she thought had been killed

Nazar Daletskyi's family were sure the soldier had been killed in action.

In 2023, they'd buried his body in the village cemetery, in western Ukraine.

But Nazar has just phoned his mother, weakened and exhausted - but very much alive.

He's been released from Russian captivity in the latest prisoner swap.

"My emotions were so strong," the soldier's mother Nataliya told the BBC, still reeling from the shock.

The joy of all the family at that first call, captured on video, is overwhelming.

Nataliya asks her son whether he's intact, "You have your arms, your legs, everything?" she wants to know.

"My golden child, I have been waiting for you so long."

Nazar's cousin, Roksolana, is screaming and jumping for joy in the background.

"It was so strange, because my son had died, I buried him, but here's his voice. Can you imagine the emotions of a mother? Happiness. Great happiness. I could not hold back my tears," Nataliya said.

The full story of Nazar's return from the grave is extraordinary, especially in a country at war where good news is precious.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Nazar - who was 42 then - went straight back to the front: he'd already fought in 2014, so he was experienced.

"He didn't have any doubt. He went immediately," his cousin told the BBC.

But in May that first year, Nazar went missing in action.

His mother then got a call from a man speaking Russian who said Nazar had been captured, but "everything will be fine".

The mystery voice didn't say where Nazar was, who was holding him - or whether he was injured. The family had no idea whether to believe him - and they got no official news.

That was until a year later, when Nataliya was informed that a body had been identified in a morgue in south-eastern Ukraine, using a sample of DNA she had given.

"The body was badly burned. They had several that they found in a burned bus. When they started looking at the lists of missing soldiers, the data matched," Roksolana explains.

"They identified this body as Nazar."

So the family received the body, held a funeral and they grieved.

Then last September they got the biggest shock of all.

A soldier, just released by Russia, called to tell them Nazar was alive. He had seen him in jail.

"We were shocked, it was so hard to believe. But why would he lie?" Roksolana remembers how it felt.

Still, without speaking to Nazar or seeing him, they couldn't be sure.

Then this week, he called - back on Ukrainian soil.

Nataliya's son had been gone for three years and nine months.

As they wait for their big reunion, the family have been trying to remove material about Nazar's funeral from social media, not to upset him.

They also had to get his photograph taken down from a display of fallen heroes in the village.

There's now an investigation to understand how such a distressing mistake was made.

But for the moment, the family have other things to focus on.

Nazar's mother is preparing all his favourite homemade food, for when he's recovered a bit and ready to come home.

"I just want more positive outcomes like ours, for other families to get calls and for people to come home," Roksolana says.

Some 70,000 people are officially missing here, most thought to be soldiers. Some will have been killed on the battlefield, their bodies impossible to recover.

But many have been taken prisoner and, for their families, Nazar's story will be a glimmer of hope.

"I wish all women, mothers, children get a call like we had - and this happiness," Nataliya says.

"I'm just waiting for my son now, to hug him so tightly. I love him very much."