Post: Witness: UAE-sponsored Russian-Ukrainian POW exchange

Russian officials on Saturday announced the return of 63 Russian soldiers to Ukraine as part of a UAE-sponsored prisoner-of-war exchange.

Moscow said some of the returned prisoners of war belonged to a “special category”, without giving details of their identities.

On Saturday, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration Andrii Yermak announced the release of 116 Ukrainian prisoners of war under the same agreement.

He added that among the released prisoners were members of the forces that withstood the months-long Russian siege of the city of Mariupol, as well as fighters from the Kherson region and snipers captured during fierce battles for the city. from Bakhmut.

Recovery of the bodies of two British volunteers

Ukrainian authorities also said they had found the bodies of British volunteers Christopher Barry and Andrew Bagshaw, who were killed in Ukraine as part of the same exchange between Kyiv and Moscow. “We were able to recover the bodies of two foreign volunteers who were killed,” said Ermak.

Christopher Barry, 28, and Andrew Bagshaw, 48, were killed trying to complete a humanitarian evacuation from the town of Solidar, which witnessed violent clashes in early January and was badly damaged by shelling, Barry’s family said. At the end of January through the UK Foreign Office.

Two volunteers disappeared a few weeks ago. Eugene Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, announced on January 11 that his fighters found the body of one of their own in Solidarity.

And the Ukrainian military acknowledged on January 25 that it had handed Solidar over to Russian forces, noting that it is not far from Bakhmut, in the east of the country where the fighting is concentrated, about a year after the start of the Russian invasion. .

The British Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not yet commented on the information about the volunteers.

Source: EuroNews

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