Two-hundred and seventy Ukrainian navy personnel and 120 civilians are returned to Ukraine after the Russian Protection Ministry introduced on Friday that Moscow and Kyiv had exchanged that quantity of prisoners every within the first spherical of a large-scale swap on Friday.
Army Administration of Kyiv Metropolis/Anadolu through Getty Photos
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Army Administration of Kyiv Metropolis/Anadolu through Getty Photos
A CITY IN NORTHERN UKRAINE — Ukraine and Russia started the alternate of 1,000 prisoners of conflict Friday, the biggest such swap because the starting of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“We are bringing our people home,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media, after the troopers had crossed into Ukraine. Shortly after that they had crossed, he posted a number of images of the freed Ukrainians, many draped within the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.
He mentioned 390 folks have been included within the first of a three-day alternate. “This agreement was reached at a meeting in Turkey,” he added, “and it is important to fully implement it.”
The Ukrainian authorities requested NPR to not disclose the situation out of safety considerations. An space with so many Ukrainian troopers and civilians gathered in a single place might be susceptible to a strike.
This POW alternate was the one deal made in Istanbul final week in the course of the two international locations’ first direct negotiations a couple of ceasefire because the early days of Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Even earlier than the alternate was introduced on Friday, President Trump took to social media saying it was accomplished.
Ukrainian authorities mentioned 270 troopers and 120 civilians have been included in Friday’s alternate.
Zelenskyy’s workplace mentioned earlier this month that greater than 8,000 Ukrainian troopers are estimated to have been captured by Russia because the starting of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Based on Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, greater than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians are additionally in Russian captivity.
A kind of civilians is Volodymyr Mykolayenko, the previous mayor of the southern metropolis of Kherson. His niece Hanna Korsun-Samchuk informed NPR that Russian forces took him away after occupying town for a number of months in 2022.
“I’ve been trying to raise the issue of civilian prisoners because there’s no easy procedure for exchanging them,” she mentioned on Monday in an interview in Kherson.
Dozens of Ukrainian households waited for hours in a leafy courtyard for the liberated prisoners of conflict, hoping their family members can be amongst them. They held banners, flags and posters emblazoned with photographs of their family members, all troopers.
Katya Kobel, who’s from the northern metropolis of Chernihiv, wept as she spoke about her husband, Hryhori, who has been in Russian captivity since December 2023. She says she discovered he was captured within the jap Donetsk area after receiving textual content messages with images of her husband from a Russian quantity.
“They told me, ‘We have captured your man,’ ” she mentioned.
Natalia Apetyk is hoping her 23-year-old son, Yelizar, will lastly come dwelling. He has been in Russian captivity since 2022, when he was captured whereas defending jap Ukraine from a Russian incursion.
“Today it is exactly three years since his last call, and tomorrow it will be three years since he disappeared,” she mentioned.
Eighteen-year-old Milena Moroz is holding {a photograph} of her father, Yevhen, who was taken prisoner in February of this yr in jap Ukraine. She says she did not see her father as a lot as she would have preferred, since her mother and father are divorced.
She is ready to inform him one thing essential, one thing she wished she had informed him extra typically: “I love you, Dad.”
NPR’s Hanna Palamarenko contributed to this report from Kyiv.
