Russia and Ukraine are sending home more than 200 soldiers in a prisoner exchange

The warring countries announced on Monday that more than 200 Russian and Ukrainian servicemen have returned home in a prisoner exchange.

The Russian Defense Ministry said 106 Russian servicemen had been released from Ukrainian custody as part of an agreement with Ukraine.

And Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Russia had released 100 Ukrainian prisoners.

Neither advertisement mentioned whether there were mediators involved in the agreement.

Yermak said in a statement posted on Telegram that some Ukrainian soldiers were seriously injured and ill.

He added that the last sporadic prisoner exchanges in the war, which began in February 2022, “were not easy.” He did not elaborate.

The Ukrainian Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War claimed that nearly half of the 80 and 20 servicemen who returned home “suffered serious injuries, illnesses or were subjected to torture”. She did not provide any evidence for her claims.

According to Ukrainian news reports, one of the prisoners is Valeria Karbenko, a border guard who helped defend the Mariupol steel plant in Azovstal. This past May, she married a Ukrainian soldier in the basement of the steel mill as Russian forces surrounded the complex. Her husband was killed three days later.

The Defense Ministry said the released Russians were being transported on military transport planes to Moscow for medical treatment and rehabilitation.

These exchanges represent one of the few areas of cooperation between Ukraine and Russia. Both sides have returned hundreds of each other’s soldiers, as well as the bodies of fallen soldiers, since the war began.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian presidential office said that at least six civilians were injured in the latest Russian bombing.

Separately, Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kirilenko said Russian forces had bombed a power station and residential buildings in the eastern province.

The Russians also bombed nine border villages in Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv provinces.

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshuk said in televised remarks that the country has nearly seven million internally displaced persons, including about one million children.

Most of them have abandoned their homes in the east and south to move to safer locations in central and western Ukraine.