On August 24, Russia and Ukraine announced that they had exchanged 115 prisoners of war each. This is happening a little more than 2 weeks after Kiev made a surprise invasion of the Russian Kursk region, reported AFP.
Both sides are grateful to the United Arab Emirates, which announced that they would mediate the exchange.
"Another 115 of our guards returned home today. These are soldiers from the National Guard, the armed forces, the naval forces, the State Border Service," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He publishes photos of men wrapped in Ukrainian flags.
Kiev had announced that hundreds of Russian soldiers had been captured during the invasion of Kursk, which began on August 6.
Moscow confirmed the exchange and said it had returned 115 soldiers captured in Kursk:
"As a result of the negotiation process, 115 Russian military personnel, captured in the Kursk region, were returned from the territories controlled by the Kiev regime," announced the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The ministry announced that the servicemen are currently in neighboring Belarus, where they are receiving "psychological and medical help" and will soon be returned to Russia.
The agency publishes footage of men standing close to buses in flight.
The United Arab Emirates announced that they "successfully mediated a new exchange of information between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Ukraine." | BGNES
