Ukraine and Russia have held another prisoner exchange. 9 civilians and 261 Ukrainian military personnel returned home.
This was reported by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
Soldiers from the National Guard, Navy, Ground Forces, Airborne Assault Forces, State Special Transport Service, border guards, as well as 9 civilians returned home from Russian captivity.
Most of them had been in captivity since 2022.
According to the Coordination Headquarters, nine of the liberated fighters are seriously ill. The fighters who were returned fought in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kyiv, Mykolaiv and Chernihiv directions, and among them are the defenders of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Among them are 38 officers. There are also those who were enslaved in 2018 and 2020.
Most were subjected to criminal prosecution by the Russian Federation and convicted on trumped-up charges.
UPD 17:35: Presidential advisor Dmytro Lytvyn, in response to a question from Babel, explained that among the defenders returned to Ukraine today, five were survivors of the terrorist attack in Olenivka. They were not considered dead.
Initially, President Volodymyr Zelenskyʼs statement stated that those returned included those who were presumed dead after the terrorist attack. The post was later corrected.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.