More than 200 soldiers from Russia and Ukraine have been released in a prisoner exchange, marking one of the few areas of cooperation between the two countries. The Russian Defence Ministry announced that 106 Russian soldiers had been released from Ukrainian custody as part of the agreement, while Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that Russia had freed 100 Ukrainian prisoners. The announcement did not mention whether any intermediaries were involved in the agreement.
According to Yermak, some of the Ukrainian soldiers have severe injuries and illnesses, making this exchange particularly challenging. The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War in Ukraine claimed that almost half of the 80 men and 20 women soldiers who returned home “have serious injuries, illnesses or have been tortured”, but presented no evidence for these claims. One of the women prisoners is believed to be Valeriia Karpilenko, a border guard who helped defend Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant. She married a Ukrainian soldier in the steel plant’s basement last May while Russian forces surrounded the complex, but her husband was killed three days later.
The freed Russians were flown on military transport planes to Moscow for medical treatment and rehabilitation, according to the Defence Ministry. Since the war began in February 2022, both sides have returned hundreds of each other’s soldiers, as well as the bodies of fallen troops.
However, the situation remains tense. Ukraine’s presidential office reported that at least six civilians were wounded in the latest Russian shelling, while the Donetsk region’s Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko claimed that Russian forces had struck a power plant and residential buildings in the eastern province. The Russians also shelled nine border villages in the provinces of Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv.
The conflict has resulted in nearly seven million internally displaced people in Ukraine, including around one million children, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. Most have abandoned their homes in the east and south to move to safer locations in central and western Ukraine.