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Russia and Ukraine On Saturday, Kiev marked its third Independence Day since Moscow’s full-scale invasion, with the two sides exchanging more than 100 prisoners.
Ukraine said the 115 soldiers released were conscripts, many of whom were captured in the first months of the Russian invasion. Nearly 50 of them were captured by Russian forces at the Azov Steel plant in Mariupol.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the 115 Russian soldiers were captured in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched a surprise attack on Russia two weeks ago. The Russian Defense Ministry said the soldiers are currently in Belarus but will be sent to Russia for treatment and rehabilitation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on the X website that the UAE had once again facilitated the swap, the 55th since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
Photos attached to Zelenskiy’s post showed haggard-looking soldiers with shaved heads and draped in Ukrainian flags.
“We remember everyone. We are searching and doing our best to bring everyone back,” Zelensky said in the post.
Officials from both sides met only to exchange the dead and prisoners of war after long preparations and diplomacy. Neither Ukraine nor Russia revealed how many prisoners of war there were in total.
According to the United Nations, most Ukrainian prisoners of war have been subjected to routine medical neglect, severe and systematic ill-treatment and even torture while in detention. There have also been sporadic reports of ill-treatment of Russian soldiers, primarily during their capture or during transfer to places of detention.
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Last January, Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds of prisoners in the largest prisoner swap in history.
Russia shelled the center of Kostiantinivka in the partially-occupied eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, killing five people and wounding five, local officials said.
Russian shelling killed two people and wounded four, including a baby, in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, officials said.
Ukraine’s air force said it had intercepted and destroyed seven drones in the south of the country. Russian long-range bombers also struck the Snake Island area with four cruise missiles, while the wider Kherson region also came under airstrikes.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its air defense forces shot down seven drones overnight.
Voronezh Governor Alexander Gusev said five drones were shot down in the southwest of Voronezh Oblast, bordering Ukraine, injuring two people. Ukraine’s military intelligence service claimed to have blown up a warehouse storing 5,000 tons of ammunition in the region’s Ostrogozhsky district. A video posted by news outlet Astra showed an explosion after the ammunition depot was hit by a drone. The videos could not be independently verified.
Two people were wounded in a drone strike in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Local authorities did not report any casualties in the Bryansk region, where a fifth drone was intercepted.
In the Kursk region, regional governor Alexey Smirnov said Saturday that three missiles were shot down overnight and four more were shot down Saturday morning.
Russia’s air defense forces shot down two more drones on Saturday morning, one in the Kursk region and one in the Bryansk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Ukraine marked its 33rd Independence Day on Saturday, 30 months into its war against Russian aggression, with no festivities planned, instead marking the day by honoring the civilians and soldiers who died in the war.
Polish President Andrzej Duda arrived in Kiev by train early Saturday in a symbolic show of support for one of Ukraine’s main allies.
Video released by his office showed him being greeted by Ukrainian officials and later paying his respects at a ceremony at Ukraine’s memorial wall for fallen soldiers.
Duda’s visit is his fifth to Kyiv since February 2022, showing that support for Ukraine in Warsaw remains strong as the war continues into its third year.
Poland, located in western Ukraine, has donated weapons to Ukraine and served as a hub for Western weapons shipments to Ukraine. It has also taken in tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war. It is the country that has taken in the most refugees from Ukraine outside of the country after Germany.
A trade dispute over Ukrainian grain soured relations last year, and historical grievances between the two countries have sometimes fueled resentment, especially among Poles who remember pogroms by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
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