Russia-recognized Republic of Donetsk President announced the anticipated prisoner swap with the Kyiv authorities today, on Saturday.
Busillin noted that there is a new 50 for 50 exchange with Kyiv on his Telegram channel, stating that “our warriors will be liberated” and that “Ukraine will be mostly delivered detainees of Ukrainian soldiers.”
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According to the “Sputnik” news agency, the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed the return of 110 Russian citizens, including 72 sailors from commercial ships, to their country of origin from Ukraine.
The ministry said in a statement that the negotiations led to the return of the freed prisoners on October 17, from the land controlled by Kyiv, which have been detained since last February.
Two Ukrainian women refused to accept the voluntary exchange and returned to Ukraine in order to stay in Russia, according to the statement, which also stated that 108 female troops from the Ukrainian armed forces had been given to the Ukrainian side.
It is notable that the Ukrainian presidency declared on October 11 that it had received 32 Ukrainian soldiers in exchange for an Israeli corpse and Russian hostages as part of a prisoner swap.
The same day, she declared that following talks, it had been extended to include dozens of Ukrainian troops, some of whom died at Olinka Prison, who had been suspected of being bombed by Russian forces in Kyiv in July.
The components of the Azov battalion, who gave up last May following a week-long siege of the Azovistal Industrial Complex in the city of Mariolpol, have been imprisoned by Russian forces in the Olinka prison in an area that Russia controls from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
When the prisoner was burned in July, many of them perished, prompting Moscow and Kiev to trade accusations.
Kiev denied that war captives or civilian infrastructure were being targeted. At the time, Voludmir Zellinski, the president of Ukraine, called the “Russian bombing” of the building a “war crime.”
Authorities in Donetsk: We’ll trade 50 inmates with Kiev.
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