Russia and Ukraine complete biggest prisoner swap of the war so far

Moscow and Kyiv each exchanged 303 prisoners of war on Sunday, concluding the largest prisoner swap of the war so far that had taken place over three days, the Russian Defence Ministry and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have announced.

This brings the total number of prisoners swapped on each side to 1,000, completing the “1,000-for-1,000” prisoner swap that Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in Istanbul last Friday during their first head-to-head talks in years.

In a statement on Telegram, Zelensky thanked “the team that worked around the clock to make this exchange a success”, vowing to return “every single” Ukrainian prisoner from Russian captivity.

Telegram channel Mash had earlier reported that the exchange had taken place on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, without specifying the exact location.

Zelensky described the exchange earlier this week as “perhaps the only real result” of the meeting in Turkey, while head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office Andriy Yermak said on Thursday that the location for the second round of talks would be determined after the swap.

Since Monday’s two-hour phone call between US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, which ended without a Russian pledge to halt hostilities, discussions have turned towards efforts to involve the Vatican in future negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.

However, the Kremlin has been reluctant to hold the next round of talks in the Vatican, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissing them as “inelegant” on Friday. Italy, a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC), would be theoretically obliged to arrest Putin if he came to Rome, due to the ICC’s March 2023 arrest warrant for his alleged war crimes in Ukraine.