Russia and Ukraine said on Wednesday they had each released more than 230 prisoners of war in their largest exchange operation of its kind in nearly two years of conflict and amid escalating bombings.
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This is the first exchange of prisoners of war since the summer, after Ukrainian authorities accused Moscow of blocking negotiations on the issue.
“After a complex negotiation process, 248 Russian soldiers were repatriated from areas controlled by the Kiev regime,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Telegram.
“More than 200 of our soldiers and civilians have returned from Russian captivity,” announced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to the Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Loubinets, “49. Exactly 230 Ukrainian soldiers have been exchanged between Kiev and Moscow since the Russian attack began in February 2022.
It was “the largest in terms of the number of (Ukrainian) defenders repatriated,” said the Ukrainian coordination office responsible for prisoners of war.
Among them were 66 defenders of the Azovstal factory at the time of the Russian army's siege of the city of Mariupol in 2022, according to a Ukrainian official involved in the negotiations.
In total, since February 24, 2022, “2,828 (Ukrainian) defenders have returned home!” Mr. Loubinets said on Wednesday.
According to Ukrainian media, the previous exchange of prisoners of war dates back to last August.
Emirati mediation
According to Kiev and Moscow, Wednesday's exchange was made possible through the mediation of the United Arab Emirates, an important partner of Russia on several humanitarian, economic and energy issues.
This exchange comes amid escalating violence between Russians and Ukrainians in recent days, with attacks from both sides killing and wounding dozens of civilians.
A Russian missile attack on Ukraine left about fifty dead on Friday, followed by an unprecedented Ukrainian bombardment of the Russian city of Belgorod on Saturday (25 dead), and on Tuesday renewed large-scale Russian attacks on Kiev, its environs and Kharkiv in the east (five dead). .
Small Russian bomb attacks killed three people in two regions of Ukraine on Wednesday. The previous evening, the Russian region of Belgorod was attacked by four waves of Ukrainian attacks, resulting in one death and eleven injuries.
Russia and Ukraine have conducted several prisoner exchanges since the conflict began in February 2022.
Nevertheless, at the end of November, Dmytro Loubinets accused Russia of preventing any exchange of prisoners of war. “The exchange is not taking place because Russia doesn’t want it,” he complained.
Last August, Ukraine's human rights commissioner said that Ukraine had managed to recover nearly 2,600 of its citizens held captive since the start of the Russian invasion.
There would still be thousands of prisoners of war on both sides.
In recent months, Moscow has tightened procedures to impose harsh sentences on Ukrainian military prisoners, accusing them of murder of civilians and other war crimes.