Such exchanges are one of the few areas of cooperation between Ukraine and Russia.
More than 200 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have returned home in a prisoner exchange, according to the warring countries.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Monday that 106 Russian soldiers had been released from Ukrainian custody as part of an agreement with Ukraine.
Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russia has released 100 Ukrainian prisoners.
Neither announcement mentioned whether any intermediaries were involved in the deal.
Some Ukrainian soldiers are seriously injured and sick, Yermak said in a statement on Telegram.
He added that the latest of the sporadic prisoner exchanges in the war that began in February 2022 was “not an easy one”. He did not elaborate further.
The Ukrainian POW Treatment Coordination Headquarters claimed that nearly half of the 80 male and 20 female soldiers who returned home “have serious injuries or illnesses or have been tortured”. It provided no evidence for his claims.
According to Ukrainian news reports, one of the female prisoners is Valeriia Karpilenko, a border guard who had helped defend the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol. Last May, she married a Ukrainian soldier in the basement of the steel mill as Russian troops surrounded the complex. Her husband was killed three days later.
A still image from a video released by the Russian Ministry of Defense shows what was said about captured Russian military personnel on a bus after the latest POW exchange (Russian Ministry of Defense/Handout via Reuters)
The liberated Russians were flown to Moscow on military transport planes for medical treatment and rehabilitation, the defense ministry said.
Such exchanges are one of the few areas of cooperation between Ukraine and Russia. The two sides have returned hundreds of each other’s soldiers since the start of the war, as well as the bodies of fallen troops.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s presidential office said at least six civilians were injured in the latest Russian shelling.
Separately, Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Russian troops attacked a power plant and residential buildings in the eastern province.
The Russians also shelled nine border villages in Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv provinces.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in television remarks that the country has nearly seven million internally displaced people, including about one million children.
Most of them have left their homes in the east and south to move to safer locations in central and western Ukraine.
(TagsToTranslate)News