Dozens of residents of the Russian border region of Kursk have been returned from Ukraine to Russia, Moscow said Friday, following rare and “painstaking” talks between Moscow and Kiev.
Kiev launched a major ground offensive in the Kursk region in August, capturing large swaths of Russian territory home to thousands of civilians.
It was not clear why the residents were moved to Ukraine, and there was no immediate comment from Kiev.
Russian human rights ombudsman Tatiana Moskalkova said, “Today, 46 residents of the Kursk region returned from Ukraine to Russia as a result of the dialogue process with the Ukrainian side.”
According to local governor Alexei Smirnov, all the residents were from Sudzhansky District, which is home to the border town of Sudza, which Ukraine captured shortly after launching its invasion.
“The painstaking and lengthy negotiations to return our fellow countrymen to their homeland have yielded results,” he said on Telegram.
The residents included 12 children and were repatriated via Belarus, he said, adding that they were all given “all necessary assistance.”
One of the children returned in the deal was three-year-old Darina, her mother Anastasia Gridina told AFP.
She said, “They’re already on their way. I’ll meet Darina in four hours.”
Gridina had left her daughter with her grandmother in the village of Lebedevka in the Kursk region and had moved to Moscow for temporary work when Ukraine launched its offensive.
In October she told AFP she was pleading for help “everywhere”, even writing a personal letter to President Vladimir Putin.
At one point he tried to cross the front lines himself, but was forced to turn back.
The deal comes at a tense moment in the Ukraine conflict, in which Kiev has fired British- and US-supplied long-range missiles at Russia and Moscow has fired hypersonic missiles at its neighbor.
The limited return of civilians, as well as the exchange of captured soldiers and bodies of killed fighters, has become the only area of ​​cooperation between the two sides, which have been fighting since Moscow launched a full-scale offensive in February 2022 .
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