Russia has returned 116 prisoners of war to Ukraine as part of the latest prisoner exchange between the two countries, a senior Ukrainian official said.
Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, posted on Telegram on Saturday to announce that “another major prisoner exchange” had taken place.
This follows reports from Russian state media earlier Saturday that Ukraine had returned 63 Russian prisoners of war after a “difficult negotiation process”.
“We managed to return 116 of our men, defenders of Mariupol, Kherson partisans, snipers from the Bakhmut sector and other heroes,” Yermak said in the Telegram post.
Ukraine also secured the “return of the bodies of foreign volunteers” Christopher Parry and Andrew Bagshaw, according to Yermak.
According to a statement by the Parry family on January 24, Parry and Bagshaw, both British citizens, were killed while on a humanitarian mission in Soledar in eastern Ukraine.
Yermak said Ukraine also recovered the body of Yevhen Kulyk, a Ukrainian volunteer soldier “who served in the French Foreign Legion and returned to defend Ukraine” after the Russian invasion began.
Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti, citing the Russian Defense Ministry, reported on Saturday that the 63 “released Russian military personnel include persons of a ‘sensitive category’ whose exchange was facilitated by the mediation efforts of the leaders of the United Arab Emirates.”
The soldiers are back on Russian soil and are receiving “all necessary psychological and medical assistance” and the chance to contact relatives, RIA Novosti added.
Some background: On January 8, 100 soldiers were returned to their respective home countries as part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine. At the time, Yermak promised it would not be “the last exchange”, outlining Ukraine’s commitment to return “all our people”.
Uliana Pavlova and Denis Lapin contributed reporting to this post.