Russia and Ukraine have entered negotiations to exchange prisoners captured during Kyiv’s unprecedented incursion into southwestern Russia’s Kursk region, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner said Wednesday.
“There was a proactive conversation [with Russian human rights commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova],” ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets told Ukrainian television in a segment he posted on his Telegram channel, voicing hopes that the talks would progress soon.
Lubinets said Kyiv was ready to continue exchange processes based on the Geneva Convention “at any time,” but accused Moscow of “finding new reasons” to avoid them.
Ukrainian analysts alleged last month that Russia was deliberately slowing down exchanges in a bid to turn the families of captured Ukrainian soldiers and civilians against their own government.
Moskalkova, meanwhile, has accused Kyiv of roadblocking the exchange efforts.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, which leads negotiations on prisoners of war, confirmed to the Financial Times on Thursday that it was working on a potential exchange.
While Kyiv has not confirmed the exact number of Russian prisoners its forces have captured in the Kursk assault, officials and soldiers at the border told FT that the figure is in the “hundreds.”
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine had captured more than 100 Russian servicemen that day.
Zelensky last week credited his soldiers for “replenishing the exchange fund.”
FT also cited an anonymous Ukrainian SBU security service official saying its forces alone had captured 102 soldiers from a motorized rifle regiment and Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces unit during the Kursk incursion.
“This is the biggest capture of the enemy that has been carried out at one time,” the SBU official was quoted as saying.
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