EXCLUSIVE: Where are my dogs of war? Female Ukrainian POW freed in prisoner exchange launches desperate search for her two sniffer dog spaniels

• Alina Panina, 25, was let go in a prisoner exchange after five months in jail
• Her captors kept her spaniels, Sonja and Jessie, but Alina vows to get them back

A Ukranian soldier freed from Russian captivity has launched a desperate search for her two beloved sniffer dogs – who are still missing following her release.

Alina Panina, 25, was let go in a prisoner exchange after five months in the invaders’ most notorious jail but her captors cruelly kept her spaniels, Sonja and Jessie, behind enemy lines.

The female border guard has vowed to get them back by any means possible even sending a search party into occupied Donetsk where they had been held.

But she understands the Russians have now employed the highly skilled sniffer dogs to work for them against Ukraine – making her mission to save them all the more daunting.

‘I miss them so much,’ Mrs Panina told the Mail from Western Ukraine, where she is working as a dog instructor.

Released: Alina Panina, who was let go in a prisoner exchange after five months in the invaders’ most notorious jail, with her new dog Chelsea

‘They were so clever and affectionate – they understood us just by looking at us. It must be possible to find the people who have taken them.

‘I am just ready to buy the dogs back for whatever money they want. Because these dogs, they saved my life more than once during the war.’

Mrs Panina is also desperately trying to get information about her husband, Illya, who she has not heard from since he was captured two weeks before her in Mariupol.

She had been in the city’s port checking cargo for contraband with Sonja, three, and Jessie, four, when Russia invaded.

She was ordered to join defensive forces in the city’s steelworks, and was part of the last stand at Azovstal where she finally surrendered on May 17.

The border guard was then taken to Olenivka prison in Donetsk where her dogs were immediately taken from her.

Mrs Panina said: ‘They didn’t even let me say goodbye. They just took them by the lead and walked them away. They were barking but there was nothing I could do.’

She could hear her dogs pining for her from the other side of the detainment centre but that was the last she saw of them before she was freed last October.

Her spaniels, Sonja and Jessie, are being held behind enemy lines by Russian forces

The female border guard has vowed to get them back by any means possible even sending a search party into occupied Donetsk where they had been held

Immediately on her release alongside 107 fellow female Ukrainian prisoners of war she sent a rescue party of brave volunteers to try and get her pets from Olenivka.

She said: ‘They went back to Olenivka – where I had been held together with the dogs.

‘They asked and were told that the dogs were no longer there. After I was exchanged, the dogs were given away straightaway to Russian dog handlers.

‘Ukrainian sniffer dogs are very smart, very well trained – Russians don’t have dogs like that. So they took our dogs away.’ She has also desperately pushed the Russians for information for information on her husband – but has been stonewalled.

‘There is no information about my husband. They give me nothing. I miss him so much – I drew all my strength from his support.’

Source: Read Full Article