According to Ukrainian information, Kyiv and Moscow have agreed on a prisoner exchange that will also allow numerous fighters from Mariupol to return home. Otherwise, some of them might have faced the death penalty.
According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, 144 Ukrainian soldiers were freed in the largest exchange of prisoners to date between Russia and Ukraine. Among them are 95 fighters from the Azov steelworks in Mariupol, the intelligence department of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense told Telegram. Information on the place and time of the exchange was initially not given.
The pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine also announced an exchange of 144 prisoners each. The corresponding number of fighters from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Russia are now returning home, the head of the breakaway region, Denis Puschilin, explains on Telegram. In return, 144 captured Ukrainians were handed over to the government in Kyiv. Most of them are wounded.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said most of the soldiers who have now been released were seriously injured by gunfire or shrapnel, while others had burns and broken bones. They would now be cared for medically and psychologically.
Thousands of Ukrainian fighters had defended the Azov steelworks against the Russian army for weeks and entrenched themselves in underground tunnels of the huge plant. In mid-April, hundreds of fighters finally surrendered.
According to the pro-Russian separatists, they were taken to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic as “prisoners of war”. A separatist representative said at the end of May that at least some of them were facing the death penalty.
According to its own statements, Ukraine recently received the bodies of fallen soldiers from its own ranks from Russia. “Ukraine has recovered the bodies of 46 heroic defenders for their dignified burial,” the Ministry for Reintegration in Kyiv said the previous day.
It said 21 of the bodies belonged to defenders of the Azovstal Steel Works. The handover took place in the southeastern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhia. Whether and how many dead were handed over to the Russian side was not reported. The day before, representatives of the breakaway Donetsk region announced that they had found a total of 172 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers on the territory of Azovstal.
