(Bloomberg) -- Russia and Ukraine exchanged a total of roughly 300 prisoners in the first swap in more than two months, each side said on Monday.
Ukraine returned 189 of its citizens from Russian captivity, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram, while the Russian Defense Ministry said earlier on Monday that both sides returned 150 prisoners. Zelenskiy didn’t comment on the number of Russians released.
The United Arab Emirates mediated the agreement, according to statements from both the Russian ministry and Zelenskiy.
The Ukrainian president said that the returnees include soldiers from various units, including the Azov regiment, as well as two civilians. The returned Russian military personnel are currently in Belarus, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said in its statement.
Kyiv and Russia have conducted dozens of prisoner exchanges since the start of Russia’s nearly three-year-old invasion. In October, the two countries returned 95 soldiers each under an agreement also mediated by the UAE.
Ukraine hasn’t released the exact numbers of its citizens being held by Russia. In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that 6,465 Ukrainian soldiers were held by Russia and 1,348 Russian service members by Ukraine. These claims couldn’t be independently verified.
Monday’s exchange was one of the biggest since the start of the war, Kyiv’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of POWs said on Telegram.
The swap brings the total number of Ukrainian prisoners who have been returned in exchanges since the start of the war to 3,956, it said.
(Updates with information on Ukrainian prisoners starting in the second paragraph.)
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