Ukraine and Russia Each Exchange 270 Prisoners of War, Mariupol Defenders Among Those Returning
Ukraine and Russia each swapped 270 prisoners of war on Friday, in the third stage of a process that started on 19 August. Kyiv thanked the United States and the United Arab Emirates for facilitating the swap.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement that 261 military personnel and nine civilians had returned home to Kyiv's side. That breakdown shows that most of those who returned were soldiers from the battlefield.
Zelenskyy said most of those released are warriors who defended Ukraine in Mariupol. Defenders from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kyiv, Mykolaiv and Chernihiv sectors are also returning.
He added that many of those released had been illegally convicted in Russia. Among those returning are five people who were believed to have been killed in the Russian attack in Olenivka in July 2022. Zelenskyy described it as 'a very important result'.
Moscow's defence ministry also confirmed the exchange in a statement, saying on Friday that the 270 exchanged Russian prisoners were in Belarus.
A prisoner exchange deal was brokered by US President Donald Trump's administration in May. Zelenskyy said at the time that the process was expected to involve 2,000 prisoners of war in total.
The latest wave of exchanges took place soon after the end of another round of negotiations in Oslo and St. Petersburg. The picture of talks and prisoner exchanges advancing side by side suggests a limited channel of diplomatic contact remains open even amid the war.
Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War expressed gratitude to the United States and the United Arab Emirates in a statement. In particular, it thanked everyone who contributed to the release of Stephen Hubbard.
Stephen Hubbard is a 74-year-old English teacher from Izium. According to the Ukrainian authorities, he was unlawfully convicted and subjected to torture by the Russians. His release is one of the notable events of this stage.
Authorities said most of the military personnel handed over to Ukraine had been detained since 2022. Some had even been captured in 2018 and 2020, during the war in Donbas — meaning they had been in captivity since before the full-scale war began.
Although this stage of the exchange has been completed, the situation on the battlefield remains unchanged. The report also mentioned Ukrainian drone pilots' complaints of constant connection interruptions and Moscow's claim that Kyiv attacked Russia with more than 800 drones, underscoring the intensity of the fighting on both sides.
Attention will now turn to the next announcements from Kyiv and Moscow on whether more stages of the expected 2,000-prisoner process remain, and when the next exchange will take place.
