kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine and Russia have each exchanged 95 prisoners of war, officials from both countries said Wednesday, three weeks after their last swap and as part of occasional agreements to return captured troops home.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Russian Defense Ministry reported the exchange.
The prisoner-of-war exchange was the 54th since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
The leaders of the warring countries meet only to exchange their dead and prisoners of war, after long preparations and diplomacy. Neither Ukraine nor Russia reveal the total number of prisoners of war.
Zelensky said in a message on the Telegram messaging service that the UAE had negotiated the agreements again. The UAE has said it maintains friendly relations with Moscow and kyiv.
Zelensky posted photos of servicemen, most of them emaciated, with shaved heads and wrapped in Ukrainian flags, standing in what appeared to be an open area of countryside.
“No matter how difficult the situation is, we are looking for everyone who might be in captivity. We must return them all,” Zelensky wrote in his message.
Among the released Ukrainians are prisoners who had spent more than two years in captivity. They were captured in Mariupol, during the first Russian offensive in the Kiev region and during the fighting in the eastern Luhansk region, the country’s POW Coordination Headquarters said.
According to the report, just over 3,400 people, civilians and military, have returned from Russian captivity since the start of the war.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the released Russian soldiers will be flown to Moscow for medical treatment and rehabilitation.
According to the UN, most Ukrainian prisoners of war suffer from systematic medical neglect, severe and systematic ill-treatment, and even torture while in detention. Isolated cases of mistreatment of Russian soldiers have also been reported, mainly during their capture or transfer to internment sites.
In January, Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds of prisoners of war in the largest-ever release of captives.
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