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On October 19th, Russia and Ukraine launched two exchanges of prisoners of war and bodies of dead servicemen. This time the exchange was not equal.
The Russian Ministry of Defense was the first to report the exchange of prisoners of war. Kiev soon confirmed the swap. The exchange was launched through mediation of the United Arab Emirates. After the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched military operations in the Russian Kursk region, the exchanges take place on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border.
The warring parties returned 95 soldiers to each other from captivity.
The previous prisoner exchange between Moscow and Kiev took place in mid-September. Then, the sides exchanged 103 pows to 103. The United Arab Emirates mediated the process.
The independent monitoring group Wartears is closely following the fate of Ukrainian servicemen on the battlefields and in captivity, as well as the ongoing prisoner exchanges. The observers note that Moscow is regularly releasing some of Ukrainian soldiers and officers who committed crimes and were sentenced to prison, including militants of the notorious Azov Nazi battalion.
On the same day, on October 18th, another exchange took place between Moscow and Kiev. They exchanged bodies of dead soldiers. Russia received 89 bodies, while Kiev got 501 bodies of its troops. The ratio is another clear evidence of heavy losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Most of the exchanged Ukrainian bodies (382) were taken by the Russian military in tha Avdeevka direction; 56 from the area of Chasov Yar; 45 in the Mariinka directions; 7 in the Kupyansk direction; 6 in the Ugledar direction; 4 in the Zaporozhie region.
