(Kyiv) Ukraine announced on Wednesday the exchange with Russia of 215 military personnel, including defense chiefs from the Azovstal steelworks in the city of Mariupol, a symbol of resistance to the Russian invasion.
Updated yesterday at 7:19 p.m.
“We managed to free 215 people”, the largest exchange since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February, declared on television the head of the presidential administration of Ukraine Andriï Yermak.
Russia has recovered 55 prisoners, including former MP Viktor Medvedchuk, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, accused of high treason in Ukraine, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his daily address.
“In exchange, we gave 55 people who deserve neither regret nor sympathy”, those who “fought against Ukraine and those who betrayed Ukraine”, he said.
As part of this “long-prepared operation”, five military commanders, “superheroes”, including defense chiefs from Azovstal, were transferred to Turkey, Zelensky said.
Negotiations on their exchange were “the longest, the most difficult”, added Mr. Zelensky.
These people will remain in Turkey “in absolute safety and in comfortable conditions” until “the end of the war” but will be able to meet their families there, under the terms of an agreement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to the leader of the Ukrainian state.
A total of 188 “heroes of Azovstal and Mariupol”, including 108 servicemen from the Azov regiment, were exchanged, he said. “We will do everything to save all those who are in Russian captivity,” promised Mr. Zelensky, according to which among the prisoners exchanged there are pregnant women.
Ten foreign POWs — five British, two Americans, one Moroccan, one Swede and one Croat — announced to be transferred from Russia to Saudi Arabia earlier today as part of an exchange between Moscow and Ukraine by Saudi diplomacy, are part of this exchange, according to Mr. Zelensky.
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.