{"id":34409,"date":"2025-04-20T02:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T02:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/34409\/"},"modified":"2025-04-20T02:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T02:12:08","slug":"russia-and-ukraine-swap-hundreds-of-prisoners-in-the-wars-largest-exchange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/34409\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia and Ukraine swap hundreds of prisoners in the war\u2019s largest exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia and Ukraine said Saturday they each swapped hundreds of prisoners in the largest exchange<\/a> since the Russian full-scale invasion<\/a> started over three years ago.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defense said that 246 Russian service members were returned from territory controlled by Kyiv, and that \u201cas a gesture of goodwill\u201d 31 wounded Ukrainian prisoners of war were transferred in exchange for 15 wounded Russian soldiers in need of urgent medical care.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr said that 277 Ukrainian “warriors have returned home from Russian captivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP\u2019s earlier story follows below.<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a temporary Easter ceasefire in Ukraine, citing humanitarian reasons, the Kremlin said Saturday.<\/p>\n

The announcement came on the same day as Russia\u2019s Defense Ministry said its forces pushed Ukrainian troops from one of their last remaining footholds in Russia\u2019s Kursk region where the Ukrainians staged a surprise incursion<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

According to the Kremlin, the ceasefire will last from 6 p.m. Moscow time (1500 GMT) on Saturday to midnight (2100 GMT) following Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe assume that the Ukrainian side will follow our example. At the same time, our troops must be ready to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations from the enemy, any of its aggressive actions,\u201d Putin said at a meeting with Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, in a video shared by the Kremlin\u2019s Press Service.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the ceasefire \u201canother attempt by Putin to play with human lives.” He wrote on X that \u201cair raid alerts are spreading across Ukraine,\u201d and \u201cShahed drones in our skies reveal Putin\u2019s true attitude toward Easter and toward human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putin’s announcement came after U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> on Friday said negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are \u201ccoming to a head\u201d and insisted that neither side is \u201cplaying\u201d him in his push to end the grinding three-year war.<\/p>\n

Trump spoke shortly after Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the U.S. may \u201cmove on\u201d from trying to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace deal<\/a> if there is no progress in the coming days, after months of efforts have failed to bring an end to the fighting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In January 2023, Putin had ordered his forces in Ukraine to observe a unilateral, 36-hour cease-fire<\/a> for Orthodox Christmas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had stopped short of stating his forces would reject Putin\u2019s request, but dismissed the Russian move as playing for time to regroup its invasion forces and prepare additional attacks. <\/p>\n

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday its forces took control of the village of Oleshnya, in the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine. The Associated Press was unable to immediately verify the claim and there was no immediate response from Ukrainian officials.<\/p>\n

According to Russian state news agency Tass, Russia is still fighting to push Ukrainian forces out of the village of Gornal, some 7 miles (11 kilometers) south of Oleshnya. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russian military has yet to push the Ukrainian armed forces out of Gornal … in order to completely liberate the Kursk region. Fierce fighting is underway in the settlement,\u201d the agency reported, citing Russia security agencies.<\/p>\n

Russian and North Korean soldiers have nearly deprived Kyiv of a key bargaining chip by retaking most of the region, where Ukrainian troops staged a surprise incursion<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

In other developments, the Ukrainian air force reported that Russia fired 87 exploding drones and decoys in the latest wave of attacks overnight into Saturday. It said 33 of them were intercepted and another 36 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.<\/p>\n

Russian attacks damaged farms in the Odesa region and sparked fires in the Sumy region overnight, Ukraine\u2019s State Emergency Service said Saturday. Fires were contained, and no casualties were reported.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, said its air defense systems shot down two Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow AP\u2019s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/russia-ukraine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia and Ukraine said Saturday they each swapped hundreds of prisoners in the largest exchange since the Russian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[19974,3907,4179,285,19746,332,7661,7660,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-34409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-19974","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-general-news","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-prisoner-exchange","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","15":"tag-war-and-unrest","16":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114367872614107922","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34409","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=34409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}