This handout photograph released by the official Telegram channel of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shows a Ukrainian prisoner reacting, after an exchange at an undisclosed location. Photo: HANDOUT / Telegram / @Volodymyr Zelensky / AFP
Ukraine and Russia carried out a new exchange of prisoners of war, with Kyiv bringing home 189 former captives, President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia's Defence Ministry said.
The Russian ministry said 150 Russian servicemen were returning home. It said the Russian captives had been released in Belarus, Moscow's close ally in the 34-month-old war, and would be transferred to Russia.
Pictures posted on Zelensky's Telegram channel showed servicemen, some wrapped in blue-and-yellow national flags embracing tearful family members well after dark outside a building.
Russian video showed smiling servicemen on a bus, some calling their families.
"We'll soon be home. How are the children? How is our boy?" said one man.
"I am overwhelmed by emotion," said another. "I still can't quite believe that this has happened, that I am back home, that the ministry made such efforts, that we are remembered and valued."
Zelensky thanked United Arab Emirates authorities and other partners for facilitating the swap. The United Arab Emirates acknowledged it had helped arrange the exchange.
"The return of our people from Russian captivity is always very good news for each of us. And today is one of such days: our team managed to bring 189 Ukrainians home," Zelenskiy said on Telegram.
There was no immediate explanation for why more Ukrainians were listed as released than Russians, but the released Ukrainians included civilians who had been in Russian captivity.
Zelensky said the returning Ukrainians included soldiers, sergeants and officers from frontline areas and two civilians who had been captured in the southern port of Mariupol, taken by the Russian troops during a nearly three-month siege in 2022.
Denys Prokopenko, Commander of the 12th Special Forces 'Azov' Brigade that defended the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol before it was captured by Russian forces, said 11 of his men were among those returning. Prokopenko had been brought home in an earlier swap.
The Ukrainian body overseeing Ukrainian swaps said it was the 59th exchange between the two sides since Russia's February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbour. That brought to 3956 the number of Ukrainian detainees brought home.
It said those brought home this year included Ukrainian nationals serving what it described as "so-called sentences" imposed by Russian courts for various offences.
- Reuters