Russia and Ukraine resume exchange of prisoners of war

The downing of a Russian transport plane just a week ago threatened to put an end to prisoner-of-war exchanges between Russia and Ukraine, but that incident has not prevented Moscow and kyiv from resuming their exchanges.

Russia then claimed that 65 detained Ukrainian soldiers were traveling on board that device, a claim that Volodymyr Zelensky's government denied.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reiterated that the aircraft took off from Belgorod (a Russian province bordering Ukraine) probably transporting weapons, but without its prisoners.

Without yet knowing the whereabouts of the 65 prisoners, both parties have overcome that exchange of accusations and announced this Wednesday a new exchange with the United Arab Emirates as mediator.

However, once again one of the parties is lying: the Russian Ministry of Defense asserts that it was an exchange of 195 prisoners per side, while the Ukrainian president has announced the return of 207 combatants.

“Ours are already home.

207 boys.

We bring them back no matter what happens, we remember each of our people in captivity,” Zelensky said through his Telegram channel.

“Soldiers and civilians, we have to bring them all.

We are working on it,” the president added in a thread where he shared photos of the soldiers wrapped in the Ukrainian flag between tears and smiles.

The Coordination Center for Ukrainian Prisoners of War reported last week that they have official records of 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers in Russian detention centers, in addition to "tens of thousands of missing people."

Both armies consider combatants whose whereabouts are unknown or whose bodies have not been recovered as missing.

This Wednesday's prisoner exchange is the second in which more soldiers have benefited.

The largest exchange took place last January, also with the mediation of the Arab Emirates: 230 Ukrainian and 248 Russian prisoners returned to their homes.

Zelensky also published a message this Wednesday in which he outlined the part of the exchange that has benefited his military.

“180 soldiers and sergeants, and 27 officers.

Almost half of them defenders of Mariupol.

Troops of the Armed Forces and the National Guard, and units of the State Border Service and the National Police,” said the Ukrainian leader.

The president was referring to the hundreds of paratroopers and members of the Azov Battalion who resisted until the last moment in the siege of Mariupol, a city in the province of Donetsk that was conquered by Kremlin troops in the spring of 2022.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has offered other figures in its statement.

“On January 31, as a result of a negotiating process, 195 Russian soldiers who were in captivity in danger of death were returned from the territory controlled by the Kiev regime.

In exchange, 195 servicemen from the Armed Forces of Ukraine were handed over in the same way,” said the organization headed by General Sergei Shoigu.

“Welcome home, guys!” said the Russian Ministry of Defense in another recording revealing the return of its military by bus.

The former prisoners were transferred to Moscow by plane to receive “the necessary medical and psychological assistance” there.

The two sides have carried out 48 prisoner exchanges since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. According to kyiv, about 2,800 Ukrainians have returned home in total.

Competing versions

The last exchange of captives should have taken place on January 24, but the downing of an Il-76 transport plane in the Belgorod region frustrated the operation.

Moscow accused Kiev of having committed “a terrorist attack” by destroying the plane because, according to its version, 65 Ukrainian prisoners, three guards and six members of the plane's crew were on board.

However, Ukraine ruled out that the aircraft was carrying any prisoners and accused the Russian authorities of having prevented civilian emergency service personnel from accessing the crash site.

The Ukrainian security services accused Moscow that, if it is true that they were transporting the prisoners on the aircraft, they were not warned "of the need to guarantee the security of the airspace in the Belgorod area for a certain period of time." .

Likewise, the Ukrainian version suggests that the device was shot down after taking off from Belgorod, where it would have landed that same day to load material.

Given the uncertainty surrounding this event, kyiv launched an investigation into the whereabouts of the alleged prisoners of war and Zelensky asked the international community for intervention.

“Ukrainian authorities have said they would like to conduct an international investigation.

We ask for it, we insist that an international investigation be carried out, but there are no official organizations that want it,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin this Wednesday.

The president has encouraged sending “international experts” to his country after his investigation indicated that the device was shot down “by a missile that belongs to a Western-made air defense system.”

According to sources from the Russian Tass news agency, it was a Patriot missile that was fired from the Kharkov region of Ukraine.

kyiv accused Moscow of blocking an initiative by the United Nations to investigate what happened.

The only alleged evidence provided so far by Russia about the fate of the prisoners has been a labeled video without sound where a line of men entered a transport plane at an undetermined location;

and another 30-second video released by the Russian Investigative Committee showing a single body with a faded tattoo that it attributes to the Azov Battalion, as well as a couple of Ukrainian military documents.

However, the head of the Ukrainian intelligence services, Kirilo Budanov, has insisted that they do not have “credible information” about who was traveling on the plane.

kyiv initially claimed responsibility for the downing of the Il-76.

Two days later, Putin stated that the destruction of the plane “could not have been caused by friendly fire under any circumstances because, by definition, our air defense systems cannot attack their own aircraft.”

His claim has been refuted in the past by Western military intelligence and several Russian pro-war channels.

For example, the United Kingdom considered it “highly probable” that Russian anti-aircraft missiles mistook its fighter-bomber for an enemy aircraft in September last year, while some well-known Russian war bloggers attributed the crash of an A-50 over the Sea of ​​​​Air to friendly fire. Azov in mid-January.

Follow all the international information on

Facebook

and

X

, or in

our weekly newsletter

.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I am already a subscriber

_