Ukraine and Russia carried out a new exchange of prisoners of war on Monday, with Kyiv bringing home 189 former captives, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday.
Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) embrace on a bus after a swap, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at an unknown location in Ukraine, in this handout picture released December 30, 2024. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy via Telegram
Ukraine and Russia carried out a new exchange of prisoners of war on Monday, with Kyiv bringing home 189 former captives, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday.
Zelenskiy thanked the United Arab Emirates and other partners for facilitating the swap.
"The return of our people from Russian captivity is always very good news for each of us. And today is one of such days: our team managed to bring 189 Ukrainians home," Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app.
The Russian Defence Ministry reported earlier on Monday the prisoner swap, saying each side had freed 150 prisoners of war. There was no immediate explanation of the discrepancy in the numbers reported.
Zelenskiy said the returning Ukrainians included soldiers, sergeants, and officers from different frontline areas and also two civilians who had been captured in the southern port of Mariupol taken by the Russian troops in 2022.
Pictures released by Zelenskiy showed dozens of men sitting in a bus, some of them wrapped in Ukraine's national blue and yellow flags.
Reporting by Olena Harmash
Dubai's real estate market has closed 2024 on a record-breaking note, reaching an unprecedented 180,900 transactions worth AED 522.1 billion, according to a market report issued by fäm Properties.
The Palestinian Authority temporarily halted operations of Qatar's Al Jazeera television in the territory including its broadcasts, citing the network's dissemination of "inciting material," the Palestinian news agency WAFA said on Wednesday.
The population of Gaza has fallen 6% since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
To make this website run properly and to improve your experience, we use cookies. For more detailed information, please check our Cookie Policy.
Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.