President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on Aug. 24 that 115 Ukrainian soldiers were brought back from Russian captivity.
Soldiers from the National Guard, army, navy, and State Border Guard Service were among those brought back. Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said that the POWs included Azovstal defenders, the soldiers who defended Ukraine's last stronghold in occupied Mariupol, and National Guardsmen stationed at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Other military personnel who defended Kyiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson oblasts were also brought back.
"We remember everyone. We are searching for them and making every effort to bring them all back," Zelensky said.
Lubinets said that many of the POWs brought back in the latest swap have "serious health conditions."
Zelensky thanked his "team and partners, the UAE, for bringing our people back home."
Arab countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia have repeatedly taken up the role of mediators in prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Russia. In a statement posted after the exchange, the UAE Foreign Ministry thanked both the Russian and Ukrainian governments for cooperating on the swap. The ministry said that 1,788 POWs from both sides have been exchanged with the help of mediation from the UAE.
It was the 55th such prisoner exchange, said Lubinets. In total, 3,520 Ukrainian POWs have been brought back home since the beginning of the full-scale war, he added.
Separately, the Russian Defense Ministry said that 115 Russian POWs who were captured during the ongoing Ukrainian offensive in Kursk Oblast were brought back from Ukrainian custody as part of the prisoner swap.
Kateryna Hodunova
(Updated: )
