2024-01-03 21:09:47
Russia and Ukraine announced Wednesday that they had each released more than 230 prisoners of war in their largest such exchange operation in nearly two years of conflict and amid escalating bombing.
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This is the first exchange of prisoners of war since the summer, the Ukrainian authorities having accused Moscow of blocking negotiations on this subject.
“Following a complex negotiation process, 248 Russian servicemen were repatriated from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Telegram.
“More than 200 of our soldiers and civilians have returned from Russian captivity,” announced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to the Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner, Dmytro Loubinets, exactly 230 Ukrainian soldiers were exchanged during this “49th exchange” between Kyiv and Moscow since the start of the Russian assault in February 2022.
It is “the largest in terms of the number of (Ukrainian) defenders repatriated,” said the Ukrainian coordination center responsible for prisoners of war.
Among them are 66 defenders of the Azovstal factory at the time of the siege of the city of Mariupol by the Russian army in 2022, according to a Ukrainian official who took part in the negotiations.
In total, since February 24, 2022, “2,828 (Ukrainian) defenders have returned home!” Mr. Loubinets said on Wednesday.
According to Ukrainian media, the previous exchange of prisoners of war dates back to last August.
Emirati mediation
According to Kyiv and Moscow, Wednesday’s exchange was made possible by mediation by the United Arab Emirates, an important partner of Russia in several humanitarian, economic and energy issues.
This exchange comes amid an intensification of violence between Russians and Ukrainians in recent days, with strikes from both sides leaving dozens of civilians dead and injured.
A Russian missile attack against Ukraine left around fifty dead on Friday, followed by an unprecedented Ukrainian bombardment of the Russian city of Belgorod on Saturday (25 dead) then new large-scale Russian strikes against Kyiv, its surroundings and Kharkiv in the east on Tuesday (five dead).
Small-scale Russian bombings killed three people in two regions of Ukraine on Wednesday. The previous evening, the Russian region of Belgorod had been attacked by four waves of Ukrainian strikes, which left one dead and eleven injured.
Russia and Ukraine have carried out multiple prisoner exchanges since the start of the conflict in February 2022.
At the end of November, Dmytro Loubinets nevertheless accused Russia of preventing any exchange of prisoners of war. “The exchanges are not taking place because Russia does not want them,” he lamented.
Last August, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner said Ukraine had managed to recover nearly 2,600 of its citizens taken prisoner since the start of the Russian invasion.
There would still be thousands of prisoners of war on both sides.
In recent months, Moscow has stepped up trials to impose harsh sentences on Ukrainian military prisoners, accusing them of murdering civilians and other war crimes.
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