Ukraine secures release of 49 prisoners in new POW swap with Russia

Russia and Ukraine have conducted another prisoner swap, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday, with Ukraine securing the release of 49 prisoners of war, including soldiers and civilians.

Zelensky gave a special mention to Lenie Umerova, a Crimean Tatar woman who was detained near the Russian-Georgian border in December 2022 while on her way to Crimea to take care of her sick father. 

Zelensky thanked the “entire team that ensures the release of prisoners and hostages from Russian captivity. … All our soldiers who capture the Russian occupier and … neutralise Russian saboteurs and collaborators bring the liberation of our people closer. We have to bring home all of our soldiers and civilians.”

Russian officials have not commented on the exchange so far. While Zelensky did not mention the number of Russian POWs that were exchanged, I Want to Live, a state-funded Ukrainian organisation created to assist Russian soldiers surrender to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said that 44 prisoners had returned to Russia.

Russian nonprofit organisation Nash Vykhod, which searches for missing soldiers and lobbies for their safe return to Russia, said that most of the released Russian prisoners were servicemen captured during the Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, which started last month.

The I Want to Live project claimed that the Kremlin had “rushed to exchange” POWs captured in the Kursk region “in an attempt to play off another failure of the Russian army” in the media, while ignoring other Russian POWs who had been in Ukrainian captivity for years.