Cliff Notes – Russia and Ukraine conduct a fourth POW swap
- Russia and Ukraine conduct a fourth POW swap in a week, with both sides remaining silent on the number of prisoners involved.
- Ukrainian President Zelenskyy confirmed that many of the returned prisoners had been held since 2022; Ukraine also received 1,200 bodies of soldiers killed in action.
- Zelenskyy asserted that Ukrainian forces are successfully containing Russian military advances in the Sumy region, despite increased Russian attacks aiming to establish a buffer zone.
Russia and Ukraine conduct a fourth POW swap
Ukraine and Russia conducted another prisoner of war exchange on Saturday, the fourth such exchange in a week.
Earlier in June, both countries reached an agreement in Istanbul that included a series of swaps.
“We continue bringing our people home from Russian captivity,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a social media post.
“Many of the guys who returned to Ukraine today had been held captive since 2022,” he added, without mentioning the number of prisoners.
Russia‘s Defence Ministry also did not say how many prisoners of war were involved in the swap with Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials responsible for exchanging prisoners of war said on Saturday that Ukraine has received 1,200 bodies of its soldiers killed in the war with Russia.
On Friday, Russia announced that it had repatriated the bodies of 1,200 Ukrainian soldiers who had been killed, but that it had received none of its own.
Ukraine holds off Russian offensive in Sumy barely
In a separate statement, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine holds off Russian offensive and is managing to contain Russia’s current military offensive in the northeastern Sumy region.
“We are in the process of levelling the position. The important thing is that there are 53,000 Russians there,” Zelenskyy said in comments released for publication by his office on Saturday.
“The fighting there is taking place along the border. You have to understand that the enemy is being held back there,” the president added.
According to Zelenskyy, Russian troops have only advanced 7 kilometres across the border.
Russian troops have recently increased their attacks in northeastern Ukraine, announcing plans to establish a “buffer zone” in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian troops have maintained defensive lines along more than 1,000 KM of the front line.
He also dismissed Moscow’s claims that Russian troops had crossed the administrative border into central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
The Dnipropetrovsk region borders Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which Russia claims to have annexed.
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