Russia and Ukraine swap prisoners of war in UAE-mediated exchange

The speech of 95 prisoners from each broadside was the 58th to instrumentality spot since the opening of the war, Ukraine says.

Russia and Ukraine person swapped 190 prisoners of warfare nether a woody brokered by the United Arab Emirates.

The speech precocious Friday saw each broadside merchandise 95 prisoners.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence stated that returning Russian work members were undergoing aesculapian checks successful Belarus, 1 of Russia’s closest allies passim the two-and-half-year conflict. A Russian subject video showed smiling soldiers boarding buses.

A video posted connected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Telegram account, meanwhile, showed men, immoderate wrapped successful the Ukrainian flag, getting disconnected a autobus and hugging loved ones.

“Every clip Ukraine rescues its radical from Russian captivity, we get person to the time erstwhile state volition beryllium returned to each who are successful Russian captivity,” the president said.

The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the speech arsenic “a reflection of the cooperative and affable relations betwixt the UAE and some countries”. It was its ninth clip mediating specified an speech betwixt Moscow and Kyiv.

The Ukrainian president said the freed prisoners had served connected assorted fronts, including those who had defended the larboard metropolis of Mariupol for astir 3 months successful 2022.

There, they defended Mariupol and the Azovstal steelworks, which was wide viewed arsenic a stealthy lawsuit of absorption against Russia’s war. Mariupol has since been nether Russian occupation.

“Ninety-five of our radical are location again. These are the warriors who defended Mariupol and ‘Azovstal,’ arsenic good arsenic the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Kherson regions,” Zelenskyy wrote successful a station connected X.

Ukrainian media and quality rights organisations reported that Ukrainian rights activistic and work subordinate Maksym Butkevych, who was convicted by a Russian tribunal of shooting astatine Russian forces, was among those freed.

Forty-eight of the returnees had been handed sentences by the Russian judicial system, according to the assemblage coordinating the affairs of prisoners of war.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for quality rights, said the latest speech was the 58th since Russia launched its full-scale penetration of Ukraine successful February 2022, and brought to 3,767 the full fig of prisoners returned home.

The swap follows the repatriation of the bodies of 501 soldiers to Ukraine earlier connected Friday successful what appeared to beryllium the biggest repatriation of those killed during the conflict since the warfare broke out.

Most of those soldiers died portion successful enactment successful the eastbound Donetsk portion of Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.