The first stage of a “1, 000-for-1, 000” swap was described as the release of 390 people by each side, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday.
In a social media post, he wrote, “We are bringing our people home.”
“Today – 390 people. We anticipate that the exchange will continue on Saturday and Sunday. Thank you to everyone who works tirelessly to return Ukrainian men and women home. Everyone who has been imprisoned must be released. Every surname and every person’s detail are being checked, he continued.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, 270 military and 120 civilian detainees have been released, with additional exchanges planned “in the coming days.”
As they arrived at a hospital in the northern Chernihiv region of Ukraine, cheering relatives waved buses full of the detained Ukrainians.
Oleksandr Tarasov, 38, a Mykolaiv native who was captured a year and nine months ago on the Kherson front after being captured by Ukraine in 2022, said, “I didn’t believe it until this moment that it could happen.” He said, “I’m just happy I made it back. I just want to talk to my loved ones.”
Others continue to look for details about missing loved ones. One service member claimed he had shared a cell with one of the people depicted in a photo while others of the released men paused to look at pictures of their missing loved ones held by crowd members.
Svitlana Kuskova, 49, is holding a sign with a photo of her husband, Oleksandr Kuskov, who has been missing for the past year, and said it’s “extremely difficult to sleep every night without knowing what happened to him.”
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, civilians who were among the detainees taken to Belarus for medical treatment included those who had been detained by the Ukrainians during an invasion of Kursk.
In a social media post, US President Donald Trump expressed his gratitude for the exchange, adding that it might “lead to something significant.” He has urged each side to hold talks to end the war.
By the time the exchanges are finished, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later stated that the country will have a draft of the conditions needed for an agreement to end the conflict.
More than three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there is still uncertainty over the path to a negotiated resolution to put an end to the conflict, or even a stop to the fighting.
The first direct talks between the two parties since the start of the war took place last week in Istanbul, but the negotiations only lasted for two hours and did not lead to a resolution to end hostilities.
Source: Aljazeera
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