Ukraine announced on Wednesday that it had exchanged 144 soldiers with Russia, including 95 “defenders of Azovstal” in Mariupol, who had fought in this port city besieged by the Russian army for several weeks before surrendering.
“This is the biggest exchange [avec Moscou] since the start of the Russian invasion,” the Main Intelligence Directorate, attached to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, said on Telegram, without giving further details on the location and date of the operation.
“Among them are 43 soldiers from the Azov regiment” – a unit of an ultranationalist group integrated for several years into the Ukrainian army, but which Moscow describes as “Nazi” -, added the Ukrainian intelligence service.
They were exchanged with 52 other servicemen who were also in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol at the time of the Russian assault. “Most” of the prisoners exchanged “are seriously injured”, “by bullet or shrapnel”, but also suffer from “burns, fractures”, specified the Ukrainian intelligence.
The last Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol, entrenched in the huge Azovstal steelworks on the Sea of Azov, surrendered to Russian forces between May 16 and 20, after three months of intense fighting.
On May 28, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz asked their Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to release 2,500 Ukrainian fighters who were in the steelworks.
“deplorable state”
Pro-Russian separatist leader Denis Pushilin confirmed the swap, saying 144 “soldiers from the Donetsk People’s Republic and Russia” have “come home” on their own.
The released Ukrainian prisoners are “in a deplorable state, with serious injuries”, he said on Telegram.
“They are all receiving treatment — medical and psychological,” said Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, which announced on Tuesday that 17 prisoners had been released in another exchange with Russia.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmygal commented on the exchange on Telegram, simply describing this prisoner release work as “complicated”.
kyiv and Moscow have carried out several prisoner exchanges since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
The two countries also exchanged bodies of killed soldiers in mid-June, which enabled Ukraine to recover the remains of 64 defenders of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.