Ukraine and Russia have held a major Easter prisoners-of-war (POW) exchange.
Source: Andrii Yermak, Head of President’s Office of Ukraine, on Telegram
Quote from Yermak: "We are bringing back 130 of our people. This has been taking place in several stages over the past few days."
Military, border guards, national guardsmen, Navy men, State Transport Special Service staff...
Privates and sergeants who were captured on the Bakhmut, Soledar, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson fronts.
The quintessence of this holiday is hope. This is exactly what the relatives of the POWs who had been waiting for them for so long felt.
The lives of our people are of the highest value for us. ‘Heroes must be alive,’ as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy always says, and this is the task of our team, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
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throwy4444 on April 16th, 2023 at 14:55 UTC »
Do these prisoner exchanges happen directly or through a third party like the Red Cross? I can't see Russian and Ukrainian soldiers meeting directly to exchange PoWs.
PodPilotProject on April 16th, 2023 at 13:28 UTC »
This is good news. A little humanity in a terrible war.
Cormacolinde on April 16th, 2023 at 12:41 UTC »
For anyone wondering about calling it an Easter exchange a week late, it’s because Orthodox christians calculate the date of Easter using the Julian calendar, not the modern Gregorian calendar. Orthodox Easter is on the 16th of April this year, a week after the Catholic/Protestant Easter.