Hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of war return home

#ukraine #prisonerswap #russia

Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds of prisoners of war just a week after Moscow said Kyiv shot down a plane carrying dozens of captured Ukrainian soldiers.

Russia's defence ministry said 195 of its soldiers were freed, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 207 Ukrainians had returned to home.

"Our people are back. 207 of them. We return them home no matter what," Zelensky said in a Telegram post.

Uncertainty remains over the circumstances of last week's crash, in which a Russian Il-76 military cargo plane was downed in a field near its western border with Ukraine.

Moscow says that 65 Ukrainian POWs being carried to a scheduled exchange were killed and that the plane was shot down by Kyiv's forces.

Kyiv has not outright denied Moscow's version of events but questioned whether captured Ukrainian soldiers were actually on board.

The incident had thrown doubt on the future of prisoner exchanges between the two sides, but Ukraine said the exchange was the 50th such swap between the two sides since the start of Russia's invasion.

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