Oleg Sentsov, the Crimea-born activist and filmmaker, with his daughter at Kyiv airport after his release on September 7, 2019. Photo courtesy of Christopher Miller. Used with permission. When the 35 Ukrainian prisoners arrived at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport on Saturday, September 7, their family and friends were already waiting to welcome them home. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky shook hands with each of them as they stepped off the plane, while journalists scrambled for interviews and photos. Meanwhile, 35 prisoners released from Ukraine touched down at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport with much less fanfare. Before the arrival of the exchanged prisoners, journalists arrived at the respective airports ready to broadcast their homecoming. On social media, journalists, politicians, friends, family members and even the prisoners themselves shared photos and updates of the events. Ukraine’s President Zelensky tweeted simply “ours are home!” The group returning to Kyiv consisted of 24 Ukrainian sailors captured by Russia during the Kerch Strait incident last November, as well as 11 Ukrainian political prisoners arrested between 2014 and 2018. Among them were high-profile detainees such as Crimean-born filmmaker and activist Oleg Sentsov, Crimean Euromaidan activist Oleksandr Kolchenko, the Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko who was arrested on spying charges while visiting relatives in Moscow in 2016, and 21-year-old Pavlo Hryb, who was abducted in Belarus as a teenager. Sentsov attracted the most media attention as he reunited with his family on the runway, hugging his 17-year-old daughter Alina, who was 12 at the time of his arrest. In comparison, the Russian media’s coverage of the swap was more low-key. The former prisoners came off the plane in Moscow carrying their own bags. And although there were 34 others being returned, the spotlight was trained on Kirill Vyshinsky – the former editor-in-chief of Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency in Ukraine. Vyshinsky was arrested in Ukraine in 2018 on charges of treason, but was released pending trial on August 28 after serving a year and three months in prison. Margarita Simonyan, an editor of RT, lauded Vyshinsky’s homecoming in a Telegram message. В моем рейтинге прекрасных мужчин сегодня один Кирилл Вышинский. Не дрогнул, не прогнулся, даже не качнулся. Бровью не повел. Отсидел 470 дней с перспективой вообще никогда не выйти из тюрьмы – и вот вернулся. Счастливый, спокойный, благодарный всем, кто помогал. Мужчины должны быть именно такими. In my ranking of attractive men today [there is] only Kirill Vyshinsky. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t bend, he didn’t even sway. He didn’t raise an eyebrow. He served 470 days with the prospect of never getting out of prison at all – and here he is, returned. Happy, calm, grateful to everyone who helped. This is exactly how men should be. — Margarita Simonyan, Telegram, September 7, 2019 Some Russians following the events seemed a little uncomfortable with the focus on Vyshinsky: Обидно немного за других. Смотрю прямой эфир и все скачут вокруг одного Вышинского. Не красиво, очень не красиво. Других тупо не замечают. Те даже пытаются в кадр не попадать, чтобы не испортить кадры. — Сергей Юрьевич (@sergeinemo) September 7, 2019 It’s a bit of a shame for the others. I’m watching the livestream now and everyone is clamouring around Vyshinsky. It’s not nice, really not nice. They just don’t even notice the others. [The others] are even trying to keep out of the frame, so as not to mess up the shots. — Sergei Yuryevich (@sergeinemo), Twitter, September 7, 2019 The other released Russian prisoners might have had a good reason to keep out of the spotlight. Although a full list of who was returned to Russia had not been revealed at the time of the exchange, this did not stop photos of the prisoners from appearing online. When Simonyan shared a group photo of some of the prisoners on Twitter, Runet users were quick to point out that many of their faces were blurred, and wondered what the men might have to hide. Others speculated that the men’s involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine could still cause them problems travelling overseas in the future. In any case, the Russian Embassy in Ukraine shared an uncensored version of the photo later that day. Some prisoners even took to social media to share photos of themselves prior to their departure from Ukraine. Igor Kimakovsky, a Russian volunteer fighter who was detained in eastern Ukraine by the Ukrainian authorities in 2015, wrote that “Kirill Vyshinsky and Vladimir Tsemakh are on board our plane! We’re flying home!” in one of his pre-departure posts on his Telegram channel, Zhelezny Zek.