Ukraine, Russia exchange 190 POWs with UAE’s mediation
- 19 October, 14:52
Ukraine and Russia have exchanged 190 more prisoners of war from both sides. The exchange that took place on Friday was mediated by the United Arabic Emirates.
The Russian defence ministry said on Telegram that the returned Russian prisoners of war were undergoing medical checks in Belarus. A video posted by the defence ministry showed smiling Russian POWs boarding buses.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy also posted the video of released Ukrainian hostages in his Telegram account. The video showed the hostages wrapped in Ukrainian flags getting off a bus. “Every time Ukraine rescues its people from Russian captivity, we get closer to the day when freedom will be returned to all who are in Russian captivity,” Zelenskiy said. He added that the returned hostages had served in different fronts during the war, including those who defended Azov steel plant in embattled Mariupol city nearly three months in 2022.
“Ninety-five of our people are home again. These are the warriors who defended Mariupol and ‘Azovstal,’ as well as the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Kherson regions,” Zelenskyy wrote on X social media platform.
According to Ukrainian media reports, among the returned POWs is Ukrainian journalist and rights advocate Maksym Butkevych who was convicted by a Russian court of shooting at Russian forces.
The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the exchange as “a reflection of the cooperative and friendly relations between the UAE and both countries”. It was its ninth time mediating such an exchange between Moscow and Kyiv.
The exchange of prisoners follows repatriation of bodies of 501 soldiers to Ukraine earlier on Friday. Most of those soldiers were killed in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, according to Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
Russia and Ukraine have so far exchanged hundreds of prisoners since the launch of full-fledged war in 2022, often in deals brokered by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia or Turkey. The latest of these swaps, that saw the exchange of 206 POWs, had also been mediated by the UAE.
