Ukraine’s Zelensky hopes for speedier prisoner exchanges with Russia

KYIV - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Dec 19 that a recent slowdown in prisoner swops with Moscow was due to unspecified “reasons” on the Russian side, but expressed hope that the swops could soon resume.

The two sides held a number of prisoner swops from the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and into 2023.

But their intensity slowed in 2023 and the last one took place in early August.

“It has indeed slowed down due to the Russian Federation’s own reasons, but these are very specific reasons. The track will open,” Mr Zelensky told a press conference in Kyiv, without citing Russia’s reasons.

He added that Ukraine was currently working on the exchange of “a good enough number of our boys” and expressed hope the swop would be successful.

In November, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said Russian prisoners in Ukraine had expressed a wish to be exchanged but Moscow was not interested in taking them back. Moscow did not comment on that assertion.

In November, the Ukrainian government said it had recorded 3,574 Ukrainian military and 763 civilians taken into Russian or Moscow-backed separatists’ captivity since 2014.

That figure included those who have already returned to Ukraine, it said, but likely did not reflect all the current prisoners.

Kyiv has already brought back 2,598 people from Russian captivity during 48 swops, according to the Ukrainian military. REUTERS