Officials from both Ukraine and Russia confirmed that the two sides had carried out another exchange involving seriously wounded and ill military personnel on Thursday.
All of the Ukrainian troops need treatment, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a message on the Telegram messaging app that did not go into details on the numbers involved.
Most of the freed individuals were reported to have serious injuries such as amputations, infections, or trauma, according to Ukrainian military intelligence.
Kyiv and Moscow agreed to a large exchange of POWs and the remains of thousands of dead soldiers during talks in Istanbul earlier this month. Both nations committed to several phased swaps, including younger service members and those with serious health conditions.
Since then, Russia and Ukraine have swapped dozens of prisoners of war, focusing on under-25s and the severely wounded and sick. There are hopes they could build into some of the biggest exchanges in the war that was triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Humanitarian Cooperation
These steps mark cautious but meaningful progress in humanitarian cooperation amid a conflict still firmly in place.
Russia’s defence ministry said a group of Russian troops had returned from Ukraine and crossed into neighbouring Belarus, in accordance with the agreements made on June 2.
“They are being provided with the necessary psychological and medical assistance,” the ministry said on Telegram.
The exchange also included the repatriation of war dead, under the terms previously agreed upon in the Istanbul talks.
On Wednesday, Ukraine said it had brought home the bodies of 1,212 bodies of troops killed in the war with Russia. Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said Ukraine had returned the bodies of 27 Russian soldiers.
Despite ongoing intense combat and drone strikes in regions like Kharkiv and Kherson, officials hope these exchanges signal a fragile but meaningful step toward broader humanitarian cooperation, even if a ceasefire deal remains distant.
(With inputs from Reuters)
