Russia and Ukraine swapped 205 prisoners of war each on Friday, part of an agreement linked to a three-day ceasefire earlier this month brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was the first step in a bigger prisoner of war swap, after Kyiv and Moscow had agreed to swap 1,000 POWs each under the terms of the agreement.
“205 Ukrainians are home. Most of them had been in Russian captivity since 2022,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram app, posting pictures of smiling servicemen, many wrapped in Ukrainian flags.
Standing near a bus together with other soldiers and wrapped in the blue-and-yellow national flag, Yevhen Yeremenko, a serviceman, said he was happy to return after waiting for his freedom for four years.
“It’s a great pity it took so long. But some boys remain there. They are waiting and hoping. They hope that their motherland will get them out of there,” he told Reuters as he devoured an apple.
“We must bring them back. Four years are difficult. Do not forget them!”
Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence said that many of the returned servicemen had been held captive after the months-long defence of Mariupol, a southeastern port city that fell to Russia in 2022.
HUR said Kyiv had managed to bring home several dozen officers in addition to soldiers and sergeants.
The two sides also conducted an exchange of those killed in the fighting, with Russia handing 526 bodies to Ukraine and receiving 41 in return.
Both Kyiv and Moscow thanked the United Arab Emirates for mediating the swap.
Kyiv strike killed 24
Zelenskyy called on Friday for Moscow to be punished after laying red roses at the rubble of a Kyiv apartment building where a Russian missile strike killed 24 people, including three children.
Rescue workers ended search operations at the devastated building, which was struck this week during Russia’s heaviest air attack on the Ukrainian capital this year.
“Our first responders ... worked non-stop for more than a day,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram app after visiting the site of the attack in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, on the left bank of the Dnipro river, placing flowers and talking to rescue workers.
“The Russians practically levelled an entire section of the building with their missile,” he said.
Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, launched more than 1,500 drones and dozens of missiles in attacks across Ukraine this week over two consecutive days, Ukrainian officials said.
Six people were killed in the attacks on Wednesday in western Ukraine, far from the front line.
“A Russia like this can never be normalized — a Russia that deliberately destroys lives and hopes to remain unpunished. Pressure is needed,” Zelenskyy said, reiterating appeals to allies to help Ukraine strengthen its air defenses.
Kyiv officials announced a day of mourning on Friday to honor the victims, with national flags at half-mast across the city of three million people. All entertainment events were cancelled or postponed.
The Interior Ministry said the search and rescue operation at apartment building lasted more than 28 hours and hundreds of rescuers sifted through 3,000 cubic meters of rubble.
City officials said 24 bodies had been recovered from the rubble and about 30 people had been rescued alive. Nearly 50 people were wounded, and about 400 people required psychological support, the interior ministry said.
Zelenskyy has said that, according to initial analysis, a recently manufactured Russian Kh-101 missile struck the building.
Russia did not immediately comment on the strike on the apartment building. Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians but during more than four years of war it has frequently hit residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure in airstrikes across Ukraine.
Ukraine has also carried out drone attacks on Russia. Four people, including a child, were killed in an attack on the central Russian city of Ryazan on Friday, damaging high-rise apartment buildings and hitting an unnamed industrial enterprise, the regional governor said.
