More POW swaps set for coming days — Zelenskyy
Further stages of the 1000-for-1000 prisoner-of-war exchange between Ukraine and Russia are expected to take place in the coming days, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on May 23.
Zelenskyy made the statement following the initial swap earlier the same day, when 390 Ukrainians— both military personnel and civilians—returned from Russian captivity.
“This is the first phase of the largest exchange [of the war] agreed upon in Turkey,” said the president.
“It is essentially the only significant result of that meeting—everything else [a 30-day ceasefire] is still being blocked by Russia.”
According to Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, among those released on May 23 were 270 soldiers and 120 civilians. The freed soldiers fought on the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, and Kharkiv fronts.
The president thanked everyone involved in arranging the swap, as well as Ukrainian troops who have maintained an “exchange fund” by capturing Russian military personnel, saboteurs, and collaborators.
“We will bring everyone back—every citizen, every Ukrainian soldier and civilian, and all the Ukrainian hostages held in Russia,” Zelenskyy concluded.
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