Photo: SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP / Getty Images
A Minnesota man who was taken prisoner by Russian troops in the Ukraine earlier this month was released and safely reunited with his wife and daughter, his relieved mother said to the New York Post on Friday.
Tina Hauser said she was finally able to talk to her son, Tyler Jacob, aged 28 years old, on the Friday after almost two weeks of anxiously waiting for news about his condition.
“It has been incredible to be able to hearing his voice again, it was as if the angels were singing in my ears”, said Hauser.
The phone call “was very emotional because this was the day I had been waiting for almost two weeks,” he said.
Hauser’s son was captured on 12 March when Russian forces stopped a bus c on destination Turkey where he was traveling with his Ukrainian wife and their 11 year old daughter.
After being locked up in what his mother described as a “jail”, the Russian authorities released him and is working to return to the US with her family.
Hauser told the newspaper that she was “ecstatic” to hear that her son “Now he is safe and can get on with his life.”
“When he arrived in the safe country where he is, he called me”, said. “I was with an ambassador at the time, so she called and he got on the phone and told us where he was and I said, ‘Locate yourselves, do what you need to do and then we’ll get back to you later when everything is okay more late today or tomorrow.’”
Hauser said he could not reveal exactly where he was his son for security reasons.
Tyler Jacob made the decision to run away with his family to Turkey, but was detained by Russian troops at a checkpoint in northern Crimea.
Jacob was treated “fairly well” while he was locked up, his mother said, but he was terribly bored.
“I read a book about four times a day,” he said. “But he took the time to reflect on his life and what was going on and waited patiently for the day he would be released.”
Jacob took a job as an English teacher in the Ukraine in November and lived with his wife and daughter in the southern city of Kherson.
He made the difficult decision to flee the besieged city with his family to Turkey, but Russian troops they detained him at a checkpoint in Armiansk, in northern Crimea.
The US embassy in Moscow told Hauser that his son is the second US citizen detained by Russian troops during the invasion of Ukraine.
Now in a “safe country,” Hauser said he still He has a long journey ahead of him before returning to US soil while he works to get visas for his wife and daughter.
“At least a couple of of months before we can get the visas, although we are trying to speed it up,” she said.
Hauser said she was especially grateful for the help from the US government to get her son to safety.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who worked with the State Department and the embassy in Moscow to locate and release Jacob, said it was “relieved” to learn that he had been reunited with his wife and daughter. “Over the last two weeks, my team and I have been in close contact with his family, the State Department and the US Embassy in Moscow working to achieve this result, and I am grateful that I was able to help bring it to fruition. saved,” he said in a statement.
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