After a two-month pause, the two warring countries opened their prison gates to each other again. President Volodymyr Zelensky said 270 people were freed on Friday, 261 of them soldiers and nine of them civilians, while 270 Russian soldiers held by Kyiv went the other way. Moscow’s defence ministry said its men were first being cared for in Belarus, both physically and psychologically, before moving on to hospitals in Russia.
For Ukrainians the faces in this group mattered. Most had been captured in the spring of 2022 while Russian forces encircled Mariupol: marines, border guards, ground troops and members of the Azov regiment that led the city’s defence. Five had lived through the July 2022 blast that tore through a barracks at the Olenivka prison camp. Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets described the exchange as “historic”, noting that 86 soldiers convicted by Russian courts were freed, more than in any swap since 2022.
Kyiv, the United Nations and rights groups regard such trials of prisoners of war as illegal, since the Geneva Conventions forbid punishing soldiers simply for having fought. According to Lubinets, one man had spent eight years in Russian hands and another six, and the ages of those freed ranged from 24 to 63. Among the most moving reunions, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said, was that of two border guards sharing the name Volodymyr, a father and his son, captured together at Azovstal and apart ever since.
Separately, Ukrainian officials brought several civilians home from Russia, while others travelled the opposite direction in a family reunification effort backed by the Red Cross. Kyiv counts eleven such exchanges so far this year. With Washington’s mediation still short of any broader truce, handing back captives remains one of the rare things Moscow and Kyiv keep doing together. Zelensky said on Friday that Ukraine was ready for a three-way meeting with the US and Russia in Abu Dhabi in the first half of November.
