Saturday 14 Sep 2024 {HMC} The United Arab Emirates has mediated an exchange of 206 prisoners of war between Russia and Ukraine, Emirati state news agency WAM said on Saturday.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russia’s defence ministry both confirmed that each country took home 103 POWs in the swap.
“Our people are home,” Mr Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.
“We have successfully brought back another 103 warriors from Russian captivity to Ukraine.”
He posted pictures of servicemen wrapped in the national blue and yellow flag, hugging each other, talking on mobile phones and posing for group photographs at an undisclosed location.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s ombudsman, posted a short video on the Telegram messaging app showing the servicemen standing in front of a bus and shouting, “Glory to Ukraine.”
He said the majority of the freed Ukrainians had been in Russian captivity since the early days of the invasion.
Russia’s defence ministry said the POWs they were bringing home “are on the territory of the Republic of Belarus, here they are being provided with the necessary psychological and medical assistance, as well as an opportunity to contact their relatives”.
It said the Russian soldiers exchanged on Saturday had been taken prisoner in Russia’s Kursk region.
Ukrainian forces captured territory there last month in their first major incursion into Russia.
Saturday’s swap was the third since the incursion.
Ukrainian officials have previously said its troops had captured at least 600 Russian soldiers during the incursion, and that this would help it secure the return of captured Ukrainians.
Mr Lubinets said that Kyiv had so far secured the return of 3,672 Ukrainians in 57 exchanges.
This POW swap marks the second between Russia and Ukraine in two days, and the eighth mediated by the UAE.
A POW swap which the UAE brokered two weeks ago saw Russia and Ukraine exchange 115 prisoners each.
Despite ongoing hostilities, Russia and Ukraine have managed to swap hundreds of POWs throughout the two-and-half-year conflict — often in deals brokered by the UAE, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
