Dozens of Russian and Ukrainian POWs have returned home after a prisoner swap, officials on both sides said on Saturday.
Top Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak said in a Telegram post that 116 Ukrainians had been freed.
He said the released POWs include troops who held out in Mariupol during the months-long siege of Moscow that reduced the southern port city to ruins, as well as guerrillas from the Kherson region and snipers captured during the fierce battles underway for the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Russian defense officials, meanwhile, announced that 63 Russian soldiers had returned from Ukraine following the exchange, including some “special category” prisoners whose release was brokered by the UAE.
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Ukrainian soldiers can be seen in a trench studying an RPG rocket on the front lines of the Donetsk region on January 23, 2023.
(ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty Images)
A statement released by Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday did not provide details on these “special category” prisoners.
At least three civilians have been killed in Ukraine in the past 24 hours when Russian forces struck nine regions in the south, north and east of the country, regional governors reported on Ukrainian TV on Saturday morning.
Two people have been killed and 14 others injured in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region as a result of Russian shelling and rocket attacks, local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a Telegram update on Saturday morning.
The death toll included one man who was killed and seven others injured on Friday after Russian missiles crashed into Toretsk, a city in the Donetsk region. Kyrylenko said 34 homes, two kindergartens, a clinic, a library, a cultural center and other buildings were damaged in the strike.
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Ukrainian flags are planted at soldiers’ graves at a Kharkiv cemetery January 24, 2023 in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Seven teenagers were injured by shrapnel after a landmine exploded in the northeastern city of Izium on Friday, local governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram. He said they were all hospitalized but their lives were not in danger.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian regional officials reported nighttime bombings by Russia of border settlements in the northern Sumy region, as well as the city of Marhanets, which borders the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Kiev has long accused Moscow of using the facility, which Russian forces seized at the start of the war, as a base to launch attacks on Ukrainian-held territory across the Dnieper River.
Elsewhere, Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odessa and surrounding areas have plunged into darkness following a large-scale grid outage, the country’s grid operator said.
Ukrenergo said in a Telegram update that the failure involved equipment that was “repeatedly repaired” after Russia’s savage attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid and that residents should prepare for lengthy blackouts.
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People walk the streets of Odessa, Ukraine on February 1, 2023.
(Jose Colon/Anadolu agency via Getty Images)
“Unfortunately, the scale of the incident is quite significant and this time the power restrictions will be longer. It is not yet possible to determine a specific time when (power) will be fully restored,” the company said.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the Energy Ministry was sending “all the powerful generators it has in stock” to Odessa “within 24 hours” and that both the Ukrainian Energy Minister and the head of Ukrenergo were on their way to Odessa to supervise the repair work.
