A prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia is currently in progress, Moscow and Kyiv governments confirmed.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the exchange would proceed “in several stages” in the coming days, saying that the wounded, the seriously wounded and the soldiers younger than 25 years old were being released.
Writing on Telegram, Zelensky said: “The process is quite complicated, there are many sensitive details, negotiations continue virtually every day.”
Russia said a “similar number” of prisoners of war had been returned to Ukraine, though neither side provided an exact figure for how many people had been exchanged.
Repatriation and Rehabilitation of Soldiers
Russia’s defense ministry announced “the first batch of Russian servicemen under 25 years old were returned from Kyiv regime-controlled territory” after the belligerent nations last week agreed on the terms during negotiations in Turkey.
Similar to previous exchanges, Moscow indicated the Russian soldiers being exchanged were undergoing psychological and medical treatment in Belarus.
On the Ukrainian side, families of POWs and missing persons met in the Chernihiv region, near the Belarusian border, to welcome released prisoners and, in most instances, hear about others who remained in captivity.
Earlier last week, Moscow and Kyiv blamed each other for interfering with the arranged repatriation of the corpses of killed soldiers.
Escalation of Attacks Amid Ongoing Conflict
Late in May, Russia and Ukraine exchanged 390 soldiers and civilians each in the largest prisoner exchange since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
War raged on overnight, with Moscow firing a record 479 drones into Ukraine, including at the long-standing untouched west region of Rivne.
Russia’s defence ministry reported that it had struck Rivne’s Dubno base and called this “one of the retaliatory strikes” after Ukraine’s brazen drone raids on Russian airbases on 1 June.
The Russian late-night launches resulted in destruction in a number of Ukrainian provinces but no casualties were reported.
Ukraine Strikes Back with Drone Attacks
Russia has ramped up its attack on Ukraine in recent times, with a new record every week of drones launched against the nation.
In turn, Kyiv announced it had bombed another Russian air base in the Nizhny Novgorod region, 400 miles from the border of Ukraine.
Ukraine reported that the base is where planes that fire hypersonic missiles are based and that it had struck “two enemy aircraft units”.
It also attacked an electronics plant that Kyiv reports makes equipment to guide drones and aerial bombs.
Video captures one of the blasts resulting from a strike drone attack, and a huge blaze in the factory. Manufacturing at that site has been halted.
