On Friday, Russia announced that it had completed a prisoner swap, exchanging 95 Ukrainian soldiers for an equal number of Russian troops. This exchange was facilitated by the United Arab Emirates. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that, as a result of the negotiations, 95 servicemen were returned from areas controlled by Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also verified the swap, noting that some of the soldiers released were those who had surrendered at the Azovstal steel plant during the intense conflict.
Among those freed was Maksym Butkevych, a prominent human rights activist and co-founder of the independent Hromadske radio station.
According to his father, Butkevych had been serving a 13-year sentence after being convicted of wounding two civilians while using an anti-tank grenade launcher in Sievierodonetsk. He joined the Ukrainian army in March 2022 and was detained in June, ultimately convicted of war crimes in March 2023 by a court in occupied Luhansk.
Despite ongoing conflicts, Russia and Ukraine have managed to conduct multiple prisoner exchanges since the onset of the Russian offensive in 2022. Many of these swaps have been mediated by nations such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey.
The most recent exchange before this one took place in September, when 206 prisoners of war were swapped, also through UAE mediation.
In addition to the prisoner exchange, Kyiv reported that it had received the bodies of 501 soldiers who had been killed in action, mainly in eastern Ukraine, as part of repatriation efforts.
In return, Russian lawmaker Shamsayil Saraliyev stated that Russia had received 89 bodies of its own soldiers.
