Guest
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged about 200 prisoners of war each, the countries said Wednesday, despite tensions stemming from last week’s crash of a military transport plane that Moscow claimed was carrying Ukrainian POWs and was shot down by Kyiv’s forces. After the 24 January crash of the Il-76 plane in Russia’s Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine, some Russian officials had publicly questioned the possibility of future POW swaps. Russia’s Defence Ministry said the countries exchanged 195 POWs each. After the statement was released, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 207 Ukrainians were freed. There was no immediate explanation for the different figures. “We remember each Ukrainian in captivity. Both warriors and civilians. We must bring all of them back. We are working on it,” Zelenskyy said on X, formerly Twitter. Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s ombudsman for human rights, said on social media that it was the 50th such exchange since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion nearly two years ago, with a total of 3,035 POWs repatriated.
