 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, returning home from a visit to Turkey, brought with him five commanders of Ukraine's former garrison in Mariupol, forced to live in Turkey under the terms of a prisoner exchange last year. The commanders, lionized as heroes in Ukraine, led last year's defense of the port, the biggest city Russia captured in its invasion. Thousands of civilians were killed inside Mariupol when Russian forces laid the city to waste during a three-month siege. The Ukrainian defenders, who held out in tunnels and bunkers under a steel plant, were finally ordered by Kiev to surrender in May last year. Moscow freed some of them in September last year in a prisoner swap brokered by Ankara, under terms that required the commanders to remain in Turkey until the end of the war.