Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 103 \u200bprisoners of war each, officials from both sides said on \u200cWednesday, with Ukrainian intelligence saying another swap was expected before the end of the month \u2013 Reuters reports.<\/p>\n
Kyiv and Moscow have carried out regular POW exchanges throughout the war that \u200bstarted with Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022, \u200bwhile remaining far apart on terms for any peace deal.<\/p>\n
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President \u2060Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram the Ukrainians brought home included servicemen \u200bfrom the Armed Forces, the State Border Guard Service, and the National \u200bGuard.<\/p>\n
On the Russian side, Interfax news agency cited the Russian Ministry of Defence for news of the exchange.<\/p>\n
“It’s a wonderful day. I’ve returned home. I haven’t done anything \u200bheroic, and I don’t consider myself special,” Dmytro, 29, a Ukrainian \u200bwho was a prisoner for three years, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
“I want to tell the families \u200cof \u2060the men who are still being held: keep believing and don’t lose hope,” he added.<\/p>\n
Another Ukrainian serviceman, heading home after 28 months, Anton Tymofienko, 43, recalled his time in captivity.<\/p>\n
“The most we received were letters from \u200brelatives … Otherwise, we \u200bhad no information,” \u2060he said. Neither gave details of where they had fought in the war.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s military intelligence head Oleh Ivashchenko \u200bsaid that another exchange was expected before the end \u200bof \u2060the month.<\/p>\n
“In the next exchange, we expect the return of defenders who have been held for a prolonged period, including those who fought in the \u2060defence \u200bof Mariupol,” he said, referring to the port \u200bcity that Russia besieged early in the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 103 \u200bprisoners of war each, officials from both sides said on \u200cWednesday, with Ukrainian intelligence saying another swap was expected before the end of the month \u2013 Reuters reports. Kyiv and Moscow have carried out regular POW exchanges throughout the war that \u200bstarted with Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4692,"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4689\/revisions\/4692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpc.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}