INTERNATIONAL – This is the second exchange since the start of the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk. This Friday, September 13, kyiv and Moscow exchanged dozens of prisoners of war. Among them, members of the Azov regiment captured by Russia during the battle of Mariupol.
War in Ukraine: Western powers on the verge of granting kyiv’s request despite threats
President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced the exchange, but Russian authorities have not yet provided any details on the number of Russians released. Le HuffPost takes stock.
• 49 Ukrainian prisoners released, many of them women
“49 Ukrainians returned home”the Ukrainian head of state welcomed on Telegram, accompanying his message with photos of soldiers, wrapped in Ukrainian blue and yellow flags. Among them, fighters from Azovstal, the steel mill besieged by the Russian army in Mariupol in the spring of 2022.
The freed Ukrainian soldiers are mostly women. At the border, they get off a bus with tears in their eyes, hugging the people waiting for them. Tamara Mirochnikova, 28, and Tetiana Bougai, 29, say “not to believe it”They explain that they were transported for five days by the Russian army, without knowing that they were going to be released, after two and a half years of captivity.
The released soldiers are then taken to a hospital for check-ups, a standard procedure in such cases.
• Russian prisoners transported to Belarus
Before the return of these Ukrainian soldiers, AFP was able to board a bus containing several Russian prisoners of war, all captured by Ukrainian forces during the cross-border offensive in the Kursk region.
Escorted by Russian soldiers, some of them hooded, the men headed towards the border with Belarus, a country allied with Russia.
On June 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia was holding 6,465 Ukrainian soldiers, compared to 1,348 Russian military prisoners in Ukraine. kyiv has not confirmed these figures.
• Zelensky presses West on long-range missiles
In parallel with this prisoner exchange, Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed on Friday his Kursk offensive which made it possible to ” to slow down “ Russian advance in eastern Ukraine. “In the Kharkiv region (northeast) the enemy has been stopped, and its advance in the Donetsk region (east) has been slowed down, although it is very difficult there”he said, assuring that Moscow had had to deploy 40,000 troops to its border region of Kursk. “There is still a long way to go”Zelensky, however, tempered this.
Indeed, kyiv remains in difficulty on the ground and is asking the West to authorize it to strike deep military targets on Russian soil and to help it shoot down missiles targeting its territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky even accused his American and European allies of having ” fear “ to raise the possibility of shooting down Russian missiles and drones targeting Ukraine, even as they help Israel do so.“The allies jointly shoot down missiles and drones in the skies of the Middle East, why is there still no similar decision to jointly shoot down Russian Shahed missiles and (drones) in the skies of Ukraine?”hammered the Ukrainian head of state during a conference in kyiv.
Americans and Europeans fear that the use of Western missiles to strike deep will push Moscow towards escalation and direct confrontation.
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