Ukraine has achieved in the last few hours the release of 215 prisoners of war who were in Russian hands, according to what Andrii Yermak, head of the office of President Volodímir Zelenski, reported on his Twitter social network account.
This is the most important agreement of its kind since the invasion of the country began on February 24, ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In total, 205 Ukrainian citizens have been released, including more than 100 members of the Azov battalion, and 10 foreigners.
Some of the latter had been sentenced to death by unrecognized pro-Russian courts in Russian-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine.
They are five citizens of the United Kingdom -two of them had been sentenced to death by a pro-Russian court-, two from the United States, one from Morocco,
one from Sweden and one from Croatia.
These have been flown to Saudi Arabia, whose regime has participated in the mediation.
The five Britons are already at home with their relatives, according to the BBC.
The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has also facilitated the rapprochement of positions in order to proceed successfully with the exchange, from which more than fifty Russian prisoners have also benefited.
Among those released from the Azov battalion are the five top leaders of the Ukrainian resistance at the Azovstal factory in Mariupol.
These have been transferred to Turkey, where they will remain until the end of the war, according to sources from the kyiv government.
Erdogan was already the hinge on which the two parties to the conflict reached an agreement to unblock the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea ports.
"Five superheroes have been exchanged for 55 who deserve neither compassion nor pity," Zelensky said last night in a speech about the liberation that he called "another victory for the country," Reuters reports.
Russia, for its part, has managed to get the Ukrainian authorities to release Viktor Medvedchuk, a well-known pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch and an ally of Putin.
He tried to flee the country dressed as a soldier in the first weeks of the invasion.
In any case, Moscow has not reported so far on this operation to exchange detainees, whose negotiation has been reached behind the scenes, without prior announcement and in one of the moments of greatest tension in the conflict.
For the kyiv authorities, it represents an important moral victory due to the symbolism of some of the men who have regained their freedom.
"Our heroes are free," said Yermak after referring to Zelenski's efforts not to forget the prisoners.
"Among them are commanders, defenders of Azovstal and pregnant military women," added the head of the presidential office.
Soon the images of those who have been released have begun to circulate on social networks and the media.
The faces of some of them became famous in the hardest days of the siege of the Kremlin troops on Azovstal, in the punished city of Mariupol.
Among them, the lieutenant colonel of the National Guard Denis Prokopenko, the deputy commander of Azov Sviatoslav Palamar or the commander of the 36th Army Brigade Sergii Volinski.
Follow all the international information on
and
, or in
our weekly newsletter
.
