Ukraine and Russia carried out a new prisoner exchange today, with 160 people from each side returned, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
“One hundred and sixty Russian servicemen have been repatriated from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime. In exchange, 160 prisoners of war from the Ukrainian armed forces were handed over,” the ministry said in a statement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a post on X:
“We continue bringing Ukrainians home from Russian captivity. Today, 160 service members were released. All of them had been held prisoner since 2022. Those freed today include members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the State Special Transport Service, the National Guard, and the Border Guard Service.
They defended Ukraine in Mariupol and Azovstal, as well as on the front lines in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy.
I thank our entire team, which works every day to bring our people home.
Special thanks to all our frontline units, which strengthen Ukraine’s ‘exchange fund’ and, through their courage, make it possible to bring our people back home.
We remember everyone who remains in captivity. We review every single name. We must bring them all home—both military personnel and civilians.”
Prisoner exchanges remain one of the very few areas of cooperation between Russia and Ukraine and the only concrete outcome of negotiations between the two countries.
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