[Source: Reuters]

Russia and Ukraine have each swapped 95 prisoners of war with the United Arab Emirates acting as mediator.

Russia’s defence ministry, in a post on the Telegram messaging app, said the returning Russian service members were undergoing medical checks in Belarus, one of Russia’s closest allies in the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war.

Video posted on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Telegram account showed men, some wrapped in the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag, getting off a bus well after dark and being embraced by loved ones.

A Russian military video showed smiling soldiers boarding buses.

“Every time Ukraine rescues its people from Russian captivity, we get closer to the day when freedom will be returned to all who are in Russian captivity,” Zelenskiy wrote.

The president said the freed prisoners had served on various fronts, including some who had defended the port city of Mariupol for nearly three months in 2022.

Ukrainian news reports said the returnees included Ukrainian journalist and rights advocate Maksym Butkevych, convicted by a Russian court of shooting at Russian forces.

The body co-ordinating the affairs of prisoners of war said 48 of the returnees had been handed sentences by the Russian judicial system.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights, said the release was the 58th since the beginning of the war and brought to 3767 the total number of prisoners returned home.

A private Russian group that says it looks after the interests of prisoners of war published a list of returnees and said most were captured in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces staged an incursion in August.

Those forces remain in Kursk, though Russia’s military says its troops have clawed back some of the captured territory.

A statement from the UAE’s foreign ministry, reported by state media, said it was the Gulf state’s ninth instance of mediation in the war.

It described the exchange as “a reflection of the co-operative and friendly relations between the UAE and both countries”.

Earlier, Russia returned to Ukraine the bodies of 501 soldiers in what appeared to be the biggest repatriation of war dead since the invasion.

Most of the soldiers were killed in action in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, around the city of Avdiivka that Russian forces captured in February after a long and gruelling battle, Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement.

Law enforcement agencies and forensic experts will identify the victims, who will then be handed over to family members for burial, it said.

No information has been provided about the return of any killed Russian soldiers.

The war is believed to have killed tens of thousands of soldiers on each side although there are no official or independently collated figures.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this week disclosed parts of his so-called “victory plan” aimed at compelling Russia to end the war through negotiations.

That proposal is being considered by Ukraine’s allies.

A key element would be a formal invitation into the NATO military alliance, which Ukraine’s backers have been reluctant to consider until after the war ends.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday his country was prepared to enter talks.

He welcomed peace proposals previously tabled by China and Brazil, saying they could “serve as a good basis for a search for peace”.

Those proposals have failed to convince Ukraine.

Speaking during a meeting with media leaders from the BRICS bloc of developing countries, Putin ruled out any concessions regarding the status of the four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed in September 2022, saying that “those are our territories”.

That would be unacceptable for Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden on Friday met in Berlin with some European leaders and said Ukraine’s allies must keep up their support for the country.

The fighting has continued unabated while world leaders debate their next steps.

Russia launched 135 Shahed drones, as well as some other unidentified drones, at various parts of Ukraine on Thursday night, the Ukrainian air force said in what was one of the biggest single drone barrages of the war.

Most of the drones were intercepted, the air force said.

There was no official word on casualties or damage.

Putin also said on Friday Russia would not let Ukraine get nuclear weapons after Zelenskiy commented that since Ukraine had given up its Soviet-era nuclear arms, it must join NATO.

Putin said any move by Ukraine to get nuclear weapons could not be concealed and would draw an appropriate Russian response.

“Russia will not allow this to happen, no matter what,” he told reporters.

Zelenskiy later clarified that he had never said Ukraine was preparing to build a nuclear weapon.

“We don’t do nuclear weapons. Please, don’t move these messages,” he said.

with Reuters and DPA