Dozens of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war have returned home after a swap between the two countries who have been at war for almost a year now. The officials on both sides confirmed the prisoners-of-war swap on Saturday. A total of 116 Ukrainians were released, according to Andriy Yermak, an aide to the Ukrainian President.
POWs or prisoners of war are people who are held captive by the other side in the conflict against the backdrop of wartime animosity. Yermak said the released POWs include troops who were held out in Mariupol, a port city, which was besieged just days after Russia invaded Ukraine and was on the target of constant shelling from the beginning of the Russian invasion on 24 February.
The POWs, he said, also included snipers caught during on-going violent clashes for Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine and fighters from the Kherson region.
On the other side, Russian defence officials, announced that 63 Russian troops had returned from Ukraine following the swap. The officials acknowledged that this included a few “special category” prisoners whose release was obtained thanks to United Arab Emirates mediation.
According to officials from both sides, a prisoner swap resulted in the repatriation of 179 Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war.
This comes in the backdrop of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s statement on Friday that Ukraine would fight to hold onto the eastern “fortress” city of Bakhmut for as long as it could. He appealed to the West to provide long-range weapons to aid Kyiv in driving Russian forces out of the Donbas region.
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