The exchanges are part of agreements reached by the warring sides during talks in Istanbul earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Ukraine and Russia have swapped prisoners of war (POWs), the warring sides said, after Moscow also handed over the bodies of 1,200 Ukrainian soldiers<\/a> to Kyiv.<\/p>\n \u201cWe continue to take our people out of Russian captivity. This is the fourth exchange in a week,\u201d Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media on Saturday.<\/p>\n The Russian Ministry of Defence posted on Telegram that another group of Russian servicemen was returned \u201cfrom the territory controlled by the Kyiv regime\u201d in accordance with the agreements reached by the two sides in Istanbul earlier this month.<\/p>\n Photos published by Zelenskyy on Telegram showed men of various ages, mostly with shaved heads, wearing camouflage and draped in Ukrainian flags.<\/p>\n Some were injured, others disembarked from buses and hugged those welcoming them, or were seen calling someone by phone, sometimes covering their faces or smiling.<\/p>\n Moscow\u2019s Defence Ministry released its own video showing men in uniforms holding Russian flags, clapping and chanting \u201cRussia, Russia\u201d, \u201cGlory to Russia\u201d and \u201cHooray\u201d, some raising their fists in the air.<\/p>\n The Russian soldiers are in Belarus, where they are receiving medical treatment before being transferred back to Russia, the Defence Ministry said. The ministry did not say how many POWs were involved in the latest swap.<\/p>\n However, Russian state media reported, citing sources, that Moscow had not received any of its war dead back from Kyiv, echoing a statement Russia made on Friday when it said it had returned the bodies of 1,200 slain Ukrainian soldiers and received none of its own.<\/p>\n Ukraine earlier on Saturday confirmed it had received the bodies of its soldiers killed in action.<\/p>\n The latest POW exchange between Russia and Ukraine came after Moscow alleged<\/a> that Kyiv had indefinitely postponed the swap of wounded and seriously ill POWs and those under the age of 25, as well as the return of the bodies of thousands of soldiers on each side.<\/p>\n The swap came as Russia intensified its offensive along the front line, especially in the northeastern Sumy region, where it seeks to establish a \u201cbuffer zone\u201d. Zelenskyy claimed Russia\u2019s advance on Sumy was stopped, adding that Kyiv\u2019s forces have managed to retake one village.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the two sides are no closer to any temporary ceasefire agreement as a concrete step towards ending the war despite some initial momentum from the United States President Donald Trump who now appears to be losing patience in his campaign for a truce, even suggesting the two be left to fight longer, like \u201cchildren in a park<\/a>\u201c, before they are pulled apart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The exchanges are part of agreements reached by the warring sides during talks in Istanbul earlier this month.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,12,332,7661,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-184047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","13":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114682366905363510","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}