One hundred and eight women, mostly soldiers, have been freed in a new prisoner exchange with Russia, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency announced on Monday.
“A new large-scale exchange of prisoners of war took place today. A particularly moving and truly special exchange: we freed 108 women from captivity,” Andriï Iermak, adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, said on Telegram.
According to him, these include 37 evacuees from the Azovstal steelworks in the southeastern city of Mariupol, besieged by Russian forces at the start of the conflict, as well as members of the army, navy and border guards.
Twelve civilians were also released.
Mr. Iermak also claimed that some of these released women had been detained by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2019 for their “pro-Ukrainian positions”.
The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed the exchange, claiming to have recovered 100 people, including “72 sailors from Russian civilian ships detained by the kyiv regime since February 2022”.
According to him, two Ukrainian women to be exchanged “voluntarily refused to return to Ukraine, wishing to remain in Russia”.
Russia and Ukraine have carried out multiple prisoner swaps since the war began in February.