September 14, 2024, 9:13 AM
September 14, 2024, 9:13 AM
Russia announced on Saturday that it had carried out a exchange of 103 prisoners from each side with Ukraine, an exchange involving Russian soldiers captured during the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk border region.
“At the end of the negotiation process, 103 Russian servicemen taken prisoner in the Kursk region were returned from the territory controlled by the Kiev regime. In exchange, 103 prisoners of war from the Ukrainian armed forces have been handed over,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
The UAE mediated the exchange, according to the Russian government. “All the (exchanged) Russian soldiers are currently in Belarus, where they are receiving the necessary psychological and medical assistance,” it added. Ukrainian authorities have not yet officially confirmed the exchange.
According to Russian media, These prisoners are mostly recruits and border guards.Russian conscripts do not fight in Ukraine, but instead perform their one-year mandatory military service on domestic soil and typically have no real military experience.
UkraineThe US, which is struggling in the east, launched a major attack on Russia’s Kursk region on August 6, seizing several hundred square kilometres, according to kyiv. It hoped to force Moscow to redeploy its troops to the Donetsk region and thus halt its advance, but Russian soldiers are still advancing for the moment.
Russia takes over a new location in the east
Russian troops continue to advance and gain ground in eastern Ukraine. According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, the target is Jelannoe Pervoe (Jelanne Perche in Ukrainian). This is a small village in the Pokrovsk district, an important logistics centre for the Ukrainian army, which has been threatened for weeks by the Russian advance.
The Kremlin’s military has made rapid advances in the Donetsk region in recent weeks and regularly claims to have captured small villages in the area. On Tuesday, it also made the rare claim of having captured a town, Krasnogorivka, in the same region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed this week that his “number one priority” is to conquer Donbass, the Ukrainian industrial basin that includes the Donetsk region. (with AFP)
