Russia, Ukraine say new POW exchange completed

Russia and Ukraine said Thursday that they had completed another exchange of captured soldiers, part of a deal reached earlier in June at peace talks in Istanbul.

During the talks, the first direct negotiations between the sides in three years, both countries agreed to free more than 1,000 prisoners of war from each side — all wounded, ill or under 25 years old.

But neither side said how many soldiers had been freed in Thursday’s exchange, the latest in several swaps since the June 2 talks.

“Our people are returning home from Russian captivity,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.

The Ukrainian government agency overseeing the exchanges said it involved “seriously ill and wounded” soldiers.

Most of the Ukrainians had been captured in the first months of Russia’s 2022 invasion and had developed “serious medical conditions and illnesses” including dystrophy, ulcers, vision problems, musculoskeletal disorders and cardiovascular diseases, Ukraine said.

Russia’s defence ministry confirmed the exchange, posting pictures of soldiers draped in Russian flags cheering and waving.

Zelensky posted similar photos of freed Ukrainian soldiers, crying, smiling and calling loved ones after being swapped.

In Istanbul, Moscow and Kyiv also reached a deal to repatriate more than 6,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers, with several stages of the handover carried out in recent weeks.

Ukraine has accused Russia of deliberately complicating identification of the corpses.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko on Thursday repeated the accusation and said on social media that Moscow had mixed “the bodies of Russian soldiers with those of Ukrainians.”

Klymenko gave the identity of one of the Russian soldiers, saying his body had been handed over “dressed in a uniform of the Russian armed forces. He had a Russian passport, a military ID card, a military certificate.”

Moscow has rejected Ukrainian calls for an unconditional ceasefire at the talks, demanding instead that Kyiv cede more territory and renounce Western military support as a precondition for peace.