“The number of prisoners of war remaining in Russian custody is smaller than the number we have returned,” Lubinets said. He added that Kyiv deliberately does not disclose exact figures publicly as a negotiating tactic.
“We do not publicly name the exact figure. It is a deliberate tactic of the Ukrainian negotiating team. The Russians do not know exactly how many of their citizens we hold in custody.”
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has returned 9,446 people from Russian captivity, including 457 civilians, Lubinets said. He warned that thousands of Ukrainians still remain in captivity.
An official registry of missing persons lists more than 16,000 civilians from occupied territories. Of those, 1,877 have been verified as being in Russian custody. The International Committee of the Red Cross helped locate 878 of those people, and Ukrainian intelligence services verified another 999.
On June 5, Ukraine and Russia conducted a prisoner
exchange that returned 185 Ukrainian service members and one civilian.