SUMY REGION, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine and Russia exchanged prisoners of war on Friday, returning 75 prisoners each in the first such swap in the past three months, officials said.
The Ukrainian POWs, including four civilians, were returned on several buses entering the northern Sumy region. When they disembarked, they shouted with joy and called their families to tell them they were home. Some knelt and kissed the ground, while many wrapped themselves in yellow-blue flags.
They hugged each other and burst into tears. Many appeared emaciated and poorly dressed.
The exchange was the fourth prisoner exchange this year and the 52nd since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. A total of 150 prisoners of war were involved and the United Arab Emirates helped negotiate this latest exchange, the Foreign Ministry in Kiev said.
The two sides have traded blame for what they say was a delay in swap transactions.
Ukraine has in the past urged Russia to trade “all for all” and rallies are taking place across Ukraine every week calling for the release of prisoners of war. A Ukrainian official at the headquarters coordinating the exchanges, Vitalii Matviienko, said that “Ukraine is always ready.”
Tatyana Moskalkova, Russia’s human rights ombudsman, said earlier this week that Kiev was making “new artificial demands,” without elaborating.
Among those returned home Friday was Roman Onyschuk, an IT worker who joined the Ukrainian armed forces as a volunteer at the start of the Russian invasion. He was captured in March 2022 in the Kharkov region.
“I just want to hear my wife’s voice, my son’s voice. I missed his three birthdays,” he said. In the more than 800 days he spent in captivity, he never communicated with his family and he does not know what city they are in now, he said.
“It’s a little overwhelming,” Onyschuk added.
With the exchanges, including Friday’s, Ukraine has received back a total of 3,210 members of the Ukrainian army and civilians since the outbreak of the war, according to the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia disclose the total number of prisoners of war.
Dmytro KanTYenko was captured on Snake Island in the Black Sea in the first days of the war. He was among those released on Friday and said he had called his mother to tell her he was back in Ukraine.
“I’ll be home soon,” he said, wiping away tears. He heard that his wife had fled to Lithuania with their son. The KanTYenko family comes from Izium in the Kharkov region, which survived the Russian occupation.
KanTYenko said the Russians woke him up in the middle of the night without any explanation, giving him some time to change before they were on their way.
UN reports based on post-release interviews have found that the majority of Ukrainian prisoners of war are subjected to routine medical neglect, severe and systematic abuse and even torture. The same reports have found isolated reports of mistreatment of Russian soldiers, usually during capture or transit to internment sites.
At least a third of Ukrainians who returned home suffered “injuries, serious illnesses and disabilities,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said.
Among those returned Friday were 19 Ukrainian fighters from the Snake Island, 14 people captured at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and 10 fighters from the city of Mariupol captured by Russia.
Among the returned Ukrainian prisoners of war were five women, including Nataliia Manuilova, who was a cook in the Azov regiment and spent more than two years in captivity. The Russians took her from her home in Mariupol, put a bag over her head and tied her hands, she said.
‘I hate them. They took two years of my beautiful life,” she said Friday as she hugged her son. “I can’t believe he grew up like this,” said Nataliia Manuilova.
The POWs traveled through small villages before reaching Sumy, from where they would be taken to hospitals for two weeks of rehabilitation.
Ukrainians with blue and yellow flags took to the streets and loudly welcomed their defenders home.
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Associated Press reporter Vasilisa Stepanenko contributed to this report.
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Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
