Ukraine, Russia carry out another POW exchange under Istanbul deal

Editor’s note: The story is being updated.

Ukraine has brought home a group of soldiers released from Russian captivity, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on June 19, marking yet another in a recent series of exchanges with Moscow.

“These are soldiers of the Armed Forces, the National Guard, and the State Border Guard Service. Most of them have been in captivity since 2022,” Zelensky said, without revealing their numbers.

The exchange follows four similar swaps carried out last week in accordance with Ukraine-Russia agreements reached at peace talks in Istanbul on June 2. As in the other recent cases, the latest swap focused on severely ill and wounded prisoners of war (POWs), Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of POWs said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry also announced a prisoner exchange with the Ukrainian side, without specifying the number of soldiers involved.

“Every defender released today has serious medical diagnoses and illnesses resulting from their injuries and captivity,” the Coordination Headquarters said.

A significant part of the released captives defended Mariupol during the Russian siege in 2022, while others fought elsewhere in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kyiv oblasts. All of them are privates or non-commissioned officers.

The oldest of the released captives was 63 years old, Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said, adding that another, a 45-year-old service member, was released on his birthday.

The Istanbul deal was reached during the second round of direct talks between the Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul at the beginning of the month.

While no political breakthrough was achieved, both sides agreed to a phased exchange of prisoners and the repatriation of fallen soldiers' bodies. As part of that agreement, Russia pledged to return the bodies of up to 6,000 Ukrainian service members and citizens.

Moscow has handed over 6,057 bodies to Ukraine in several stages over the past few days. Kyiv later said these also included fallen Russian soldiers, though it is unclear whether this was done on purpose or by accident.