On Saturday, June 14, another prisoner exchange took place — the fourth in a week.
This was reported by President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
In particular, Ukrainian defenders who had been in captivity since 2022 returned home. A significant part of them were captured during the defense of Mariupol. These are soldiers of the Armed Forces, in particular the Airborne Assault Forces, the National Guard, the State Border Service, the Territorial Defense Forces, the Naval Forces, and the State Special Transport Service.
This is an exchange in the category of "wounded and seriously ill" within the framework of the agreements reached in Istanbul, the Coordination Headquarters noted. Most of the liberated defenders are officers, some under 25 years old. Ukrainians who fought in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, Kherson, Kharkiv, Sumy and Kursk directions returned home.
- A large exchange in several stages was agreed upon at negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul on June 2. It was there that the parties decided to focus on exchanges in the "all-for-all" format by categories: seriously wounded and seriously ill, youth from 18 to 25 years old. They also agreed to exchange 6000 bodies of dead soldiers.
- The first stage of the large prisoner exchange took place on June 9, the second on June 10. The number of soldiers released from captivity will not be disclosed until the entire process is completed. On June 12, seriously wounded and seriously ill soldiers returned home.
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