Over 200 Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have been exchanged as part of a prisoner swap, the two countries have announced. On Monday, Russia’s Defence Ministry stated that 106 Russian soldiers had been released from Ukrainian custody as part of the agreement with Ukraine. Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said that Russia freed 100 Ukrainian prisoners. Neither side mentioned any intermediaries involved in the agreement.
According to Yermak, some of the Ukrainian soldiers who were released have severe injuries and illnesses. He said that this prisoner swap was “not an easy one.” Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War claimed that almost half of the 80 men and 20 women soldiers who returned home “have serious injuries, illnesses or have been tortured.” However, it provided no evidence to support its claims.
One of the women prisoners released was Valeriia Karpilenko, a border guard who had helped defend Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant. Last May, she married a Ukrainian soldier in the steel plant’s basement while Russian forces surrounded the complex. Her husband was killed three days later.
The Russian soldiers who were released were flown to Moscow for medical treatment and rehabilitation, according to the Defence Ministry.
Prisoner swaps are one of the few areas of cooperation between Ukraine and Russia, with both sides returning hundreds of each other’s soldiers and the bodies of fallen troops since the war began in February 2022.
In other news, at least six civilians were reportedly injured in the latest Russian shelling, according to Ukraine’s presidential office. Separately, the Governor of Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, claimed that Russian forces targeted a power plant and residential buildings in the eastern province. The Russians also allegedly shelled nine border villages in the provinces of Kharkiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, stated that the country has nearly seven million internally displaced people, including approximately one million children. Most of them have left their homes in the east and south and moved to safer locations in central and western Ukraine.
