London – Russia and Ukraine have begun a great exchange of prisoners of war on Friday, said the Ministry of Defense of Russia, and it is expected that around 1,000 soldiers on each side will be exchanged on the border of Ukraine-Kellao when it is completed.
According to the Ministry of Defense, there have been 270 Russian soldiers and 120 Russian civilians for 270 Ukrainian soldiers and 120 Ukrainian civilians, according to the Ministry of Defense. The exchange is expected to continue “in the next few days,” said Russia.
The exchange was prepared after bilateral peace conversations in Istanbul last week.
People lend their respect in the monument to the Ukrainian soldiers fallen in the Plaza de la Independencia in kyiv, Ukraine, on May 19, 2025.
Ef Lukatsky/AP
Although the meeting, the first direct conversations between the fighters since the spring of 2022, did not agree a high fire, the two parties agreed to the exchange of prisoners on Friday.
Such exchanges have taken place in the invasion of 3 years of Russia, although the exchange, once completed, will be, with much, the largest to date. Prison exchanges are one of the few areas in which Moscow and kyiv have been able to reach an agreement during the conflict.
Fierce fights and exchanges of long -range drones continued independently, and despite the continuous efforts led by the United States to produce a high fire agreement.
Russia carried out a “large -scale air attack” against Ukraine during the night using 175 drones and a ballistic missile, said the Ukraine Air Force.
Ukrainian aerial defenses neutralized 150 of those Russian drones, but damage to Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Odessa, Chernivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk regions were reported, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.
The Ukraine Air Force reported on Wednesday 76 Russian drones launched into the country during the night, of which 63 were demolished or lost in flight without causing damage. The Air Force reported damage to four Ukrainian regions.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said its forces knocked at least 162 Ukrainian drones during the night.
Natalia Popova of ABC News contributed to this report.
This is a development story. Consult the updates again.
