Russia as well as Ukraine, has recently made an announcement over the weekend about a fresh prisoner exchange which involves 50 captives on each of the side.
Unlike earlier exchanges which were carried out since the Russian invasion, the prisoner swap on Saturday was made public by both Moscow as well as Ukraine.
The army of Russia, stated that its 50 troops returned from Ukraine had been “in mortal danger in captivity” and would undergo medical and psychological rehabilitation in Moscow.
Meanwhile, the head of the presidential administration of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, said that the 52 Ukrainian troops returned from Russian-held territory included officers, medics and soldiers involved in main events during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Among them is the chief surgeon of a hospital in the southern port city of Mariupol, which the Russian army largely reduced to rubble in one of the most brutal battles in the war.
The surgeon was also involved in the defence of the sprawling Azovstal steel plant, a focal point of the Russian siege where the Ukrainian army and civilians took refugee for weeks before they finally surrendered or evacuated.
Yermak said Ukraine had also returned a sailor who had been stationed at Snake Island, a strategic Black Sea outpost which Russian forces abandoned after capturing it early in the invasion.
A Ukrainian sailor was also reunited with his wife, who was part of the previous — and first all-female — prisoner exchange on Oct. 17.
“We still have a lot of work, but we have an important result,” Yermak wrote on the Telegram messaging app.