Russia and Ukraine today proceeded with a new exchange of prisoners of war, the Russian Defense Ministry and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced,on the eve of a long-awaited summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump in Alaska.

According to the Russian ministry, “84 Russian servicemen returned from territories controlled by the Kiev regime. In return, 84 prisoners of war were handed over by the Ukrainian armed forces.”.

For his part, Zelensky said 84 prisoners of war, including civilians, who had been held for nearly a decade, had returned to Ukraine. “Among the civilians released today are those who were held by the Russians since 2014, 2016 and 2017, the Ukrainian president wrote in a post on X.“Among the servicemen released today are the defenders of Mariupol,” he added.

The exchange of prisoners and bodies of dead soldiers is one of the few areas where Moscow and Kiev continue to cooperate, more than 3.5 years after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The two sides have exchanged thousands of prisoners this year, based on agreements reached during three rounds of direct talks in Constantinople from May to July. Those exchanges, however, were the only tangible result of those meetings.