Video: A doctor captured by the Russians records photos that were smuggled in a tampon

Amid conflicts between Russian and Ukrainian forces, health professionals are working to help victims of the war in Ukraine. This is the case of a famous Ukrainian doctor who, during her time in Mariupol, recorded pictures on a data card the size of a thumbnail, smuggled into the world in a tampon.

Now it is in the hands of the Russians, at a time when Mariupol itself was on the verge of falling. Yulia Bayevska, better known as Tyra, recorded 256GB of body camera videos in her team’s frantic two-week effort to bring people back from the brink of death.

With the recorded photos, the doctor took the material to a team from the Associated Press, the last of the international journalists in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, when they left in a rare humanitarian convoy.

The next day, March 16, Russian soldiers arrested Tyra and his driver in one of several enforced disappearances in the areas of Ukraine now controlled by Russia.

Russia portrayed Tyra as working for the Azov Nationalist Battalion, in keeping with the Russian narrative that she is trying to discredit Ukraine. The AP has found no such evidence, and her friends and colleagues have said she has no connections to Azov.