Written by: Nihal Abu Al-Saud Thursday, January 4, 2024 12:40 PM
Russia and Ukraine announced the largest prisoner exchange since the beginning of the war, including more than 200 soldiers from each side in an agreement brokered by the UAE, according to the British newspaper The Guardian.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a message on social media, accompanied by photos of some of the released prisoners of war: “230 of our people returned to their homes today… 213 soldiers, sergeants, 11 officers, and 6 civilians.”
Some of the returned soldiers fought in Mariupol and Azovstal, Zelensky said, referring to the siege of the Azovstal steel plant during the Ukrainian defense of Mariupol, a port city in southern Ukraine now under Russian control.
On the other hand, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement that 248 Russian prisoners were returned from Ukraine after negotiations, which it described as complex.
Russia and Ukraine have periodically exchanged groups of prisoners during the war, which is now in its 22nd month, but the exchanges have become less frequent and the most recent occurred in early August, at which time Dmytro Lobinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, said the prisoners had been released. 2,576 Ukrainians have been in a prisoner exchange since the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion.
According to the report, more than 4,000 Ukrainian service members are believed to remain in Russian captivity but the exact numbers of prisoners of war on both sides remain unknown.
Russian courts in eastern Ukraine have handed down long prison sentences to Ukrainian soldiers in what human rights groups have described as “show trials.”
The prisoner exchange comes days after large-scale Russian air strikes on Ukrainian cities, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians. Speaking to Ukrainian television, Yuri Ignat, spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, said that Russia needs four days to prepare for new mass strikes on the country.
Moscow said on Wednesday that it shot down 12 Ukrainian missiles over the Belgorod region in southern Russia, while Kiev appears to be intensifying its attacks on the capital of the region, which is the largest Russian city close to the Ukrainian border.
Russia said last week that the Ukrainian bombing of Belgorod had killed 25 people, including five children, making it one of the deadliest attacks on Russian soil since the full-scale invasion of Moscow.
2024-01-04 10:40:00
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