One hundred and one Ukrainian prisoners were released on Thursday, Feb. 16, in a swap that also saw 101 Russian POWs returned to Russian soil, according to both Ukrainian and Russian officials.
Footage and photos released by the Coordinating Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Andrii Yermak, and Ukraine’s human-rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets show the prisoners celebrating their freedom and posing for group photos with Ukrainian flags.
According to Yermak, the group comprised one civilian and 100 soldiers. Among the soldiers were 94 who fought in the now-Russian-occupied city of Mariupol, including 63 who were besieged at the Azovstal metalworks plant, Yermak said.
The lone civilian was Ivan Samoydyuk, the deputy mayor of Enerhodar, a city that’s home to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, according to the Coordinating Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Samoydyuk refused to cooperate with Russian occupiers, was abducted on March 19, and spent 333 days in captivity, the office said.
Many of the prisoners were wounded, officials said.
The Russian Ministry of Defence released video showing the released Russian soldiers on a bus and confirmed that 101 prisoners had been returned from Ukrainian captivity. The prisoners, Russia claimed, had been in “mortal danger” before their release.
However, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman’s office also published a video of the Russian prisoners on a bus, filmed before the swap, and said when the prisoners were asked about their time in captivity, they said they had “no complaints, comments or suggestions,” according to a Google translation of the ombudsman’s post.
Credit: Ukrainian Government via Storyful