Russia and Ukraine carried out a major prisoner swap on Saturday (14), 206 in total, in their second exchange in two days, following talks brokered by the United Arab Emirates, officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said all 103 Ukrainians who returned were military personnel – 82 soldiers and 21 officers.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the 103 Russian soldiers exchanged were taken prisoner in the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces launched a surprise incursion in August.
“Our people are home,” Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app. “We managed to successfully bring back 103 more warriors from Russian captivity to Ukraine.”
Zelensky posted photos of military personnel wrapped in the blue and yellow national flag, hugging each other, talking on cell phones and posing for group photographs at an undisclosed location.
The swap was brokered by the United Arab Emirates, the UAE’s state news agency WAM said. It was the country’s eighth mediation since the start of 2024, it said.
Kiev and Moscow have frequently swapped prisoners since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and Saturday’s exchange was the third since Ukraine began a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in early August.
Ukrainian officials have previously said their troops captured at least 600 Russian soldiers during the raid, and that this would help secure the return of captured Ukrainians.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s ombudsman, said most of the freed Ukrainians had been in Russian captivity since the early days of the invasion.
He posted a short video on the Telegram messaging app showing the military standing in front of a bus and shouting “Glory to Ukraine.”
Lubinets said Kiev has already secured the return of 3,672 Ukrainians in 57 exchanges.
This content was originally published in Russia and Ukraine exchange 206 prisoners of war on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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