Moscow and Kiev on Saturday swapped 103 prisoners of war each under a deal brokered by the United Arab Emirates, a rare moment of coordination between the two warring sides amid Russia’s advance into eastern Ukraine.
Moscow said the Russians released in the swap were captured during Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region, while some of the freed Ukrainians had been held captive since Moscow seized the Azovstal steel plant in May 2022.
“Another 103 servicemen from Russian captivity have returned to Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram.
Zelenskyy said those released included 82 privates and sergeants and 21 officers.
“Defenders of Kiev, Donetsk, Mariupol and Azovstal, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions,” he said.
Russia has confirmed it has “handed over” 103 Ukrainian military prisoners, and in return received 103 Russian soldiers captured by Kiev during the Kursk offensive.
“At the moment all Russian servicemen are on the territory of the Republic of Belarus, where they are being provided with the necessary psychological and medical assistance, as well as the opportunity to contact their relatives,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Despite ongoing hostilities, Russia and Ukraine have managed to swap hundreds of prisoners during the two-and-a-half-year conflict – often under brokerage arrangements by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
The announcement comes a day after Zelensky said 49 Ukrainian prisoners of war had been returned from Russia and three weeks ago the two sides swapped 115 prisoners each under mediation by the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE Foreign Ministry described the agreement as “successful” and on Saturday thanked both sides for their cooperation.
Russian Progress
The prisoner swap comes as Russia advances into eastern Ukraine, where it claims to have seized several villages in recent weeks.
The Russian Defence Ministry said in a daily briefing that it had “liberated” the village of Zelenye Pershe, less than 30 kilometres (19 miles) from Pokrovsk, a major logistics hub held by Ukraine.
Pokrovsk lies at the crossroads of a major road that supplies Ukrainian troops and towns on the eastern border and has long been a target of Moscow’s forces.
More than half of the city’s 60,000 residents have fled since the offensive began in February 2022, and evacuations have accelerated in recent weeks as Moscow’s forces draw closer.
Ukraine had hoped its major cross-border incursion into the Kursk region last month would slow Russia’s advance in the east.
On Friday, Zelenskyy said Moscow’s pace had slowed somewhat, but acknowledged the situation on the eastern front remains “very difficult.”
Meanwhile Russia this week claimed it had seized large swathes of territory in the Kursk region, and appears to have launched a counter-attack.
Missile controversy
Tensions between Russia and the West over the conflict reached critical levels this week when Britain and the United States discussed allowing Ukraine to use long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
The discussions followed the visit of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British counterpart David Lammy to Kyiv.
President Vladimir Putin warned Western countries on Thursday that giving the green light to the use of long-range weapons inside Russia would draw the NATO military alliance into a “war” with Moscow.
“This will significantly change the nature of the conflict,” Putin told a state television reporter.
“This would mean that NATO countries, the United States, European countries, are at war with Russia,” he said.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden on Friday postponed a decision on the move.
US officials believe the missiles would make a limited difference to the Ukrainian campaign and want to ensure that Washington does not exhaust its own stockpile of weapons.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
