Elizabeth Tsurkov, the Russian-Israeli tutorial who was kidnapped by the Shiite militia Kataeb Hezbollah in Iraq in 2023, issued on Friday her first public assertion since being freed on September 10, thanking the US for orchestrating it.
“Lastly, blessedly, free after 903 days in captivity,” Tsurkov wrote on X. “Thanks President Trump, for the decisive motion that introduced me dwelling with out something given in return to the abductors, Kataeb Hezbollah.”
She mentioned she was moreover “deeply grateful” to US Particular Envoy for Hostage Response Adam Boehler and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for his or her efforts.
“Thanks from the underside of my coronary heart to everybody who tried to assist in any method,” added Tsurkov.
In a follow-up publish in Hebrew, Tsurkov thanked Israel’s Hostage and Lacking Individuals Coordinator Gal Hirsch for working to safe her launch, and her medical groups in Israel for the care she acquired upon her return.
“I’ve no phrases to explain the sensation of happiness of being free and being with my household,” she added. “All of the hostages and their households should expertise this sense.
— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) October 3, 2025
She moreover posted a “guess who’s again” meme on the social media web site.
Notably, Tsurkov didn’t thank Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel was mentioned to have had little or no to do with releasing her, and The Occasions of Israel reported following her launch that with out the intervention and stress of the US administration, she may need remained in captivity in Iraq for a lot of extra years.
Former Israeli hostage Elizabeth Tsurkov is greeted by household and mates at Sheba Medical Heart on September 10, 2025. (Yuval Yosef/GPO)
Tsurkov, a doctoral pupil at Princeton College and fellow on the New Traces Institute for Technique and Coverage, went lacking in Iraq in March 2023.
She had seemingly entered Iraq on her Russian passport and had travelled to the nation as a part of her doctoral research.
She was energetic on Twitter, the place she has tens of 1000’s of followers and describes herself as “obsessed with human rights.”
In Baghdad, she had centered on pro-Iran factions and the motion of Iraqi Shiite chief Moqtada Sadr as a part of her analysis on the area.
She was kidnapped as she was leaving a restaurant within the Iraqi capital’s Karrada neighborhood, an Iraqi intelligence supply advised AFP in 2023.
