Russia and Ukraine have carried out another prisoner-of-war exchange under a 160-for-160 formula. The exchange was announced by the Russian Defense Ministry and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Russian military ministry did not provide further details about the prisoners who were returned or clarify the circumstances of the exchange.
Ukraine’s state-run project “I Want to Live” published recordings of conversations with Russian servicemen on a bus before the swap. Meanwhile, Zvezda, a television channel owned by the Russian Defense Ministry, released footage of Russian participants in the exchange at the Novaya Guta checkpoint on the border between Ukraine and Belarus.
According to Volodymyr Zelensky, all Ukrainian servicemen returned in this exchange had been taken prisoner back in 2022.
“They defended Ukraine in Mariupol and at Azovstal, and on the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy fronts.”
At the time of publication, neither side had provided additional information about the condition of the released servicemen or the procedures to follow after the exchange.