Russia, Ukraine start delayed prisoner swap after recriminations

Henry Meyer, Bloomberg News on Jun 9, 2025

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Russia and Ukraine started a major prisoner exchange on Monday after days of wrangling cast doubt over the only concrete result of peace talks last week in Turkey.

The first groups of prisoners under the age of 25 years were transferred by both sides, and the returning Russian soldiers are currently in Belarus, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on its Telegram channel, without specifying the number exchanged. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the first soldiers were returned from Russian captivity and said the process would continue in several stages over the coming days.

“The process is quite complex, with many sensitive details, and negotiations continue virtually every day,” Zelenskyy said in a statement on X. He also didn’t specify how many prisoners were involved, but said those returning included the wounded and seriously wounded. “We count on the full implementation of the humanitarian agreements reached during the meeting in Istanbul,” he said.

The planned swap of 1,200 people from each side is set to be the largest-to-date of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now well into its fourth year, but was held up as the two sides disagreed over details of the arrangement.

Russia said at the weekend that it was ready to move ahead with the handover, including the refrigerated bodies of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen killed in action, but had been stymied. Ukraine said it was poised to swap badly injured and severely ill service members as well as younger soldiers, but the information Moscow provided didn’t match what was agreed upon, delaying the process.

Two recent rounds of talks haven’t made any progress toward negotiating an end to the war, with Russia setting out maximalist demands and U.S. President Donald Trump stepping back from calls for an immediate ceasefire.

The two sides exchanged 1,000 prisoners each over three days in late May at a time of several deadly Russian airstrikes across Ukraine.

Russia has stepped up major missile and drone strikes against Ukraine after a surprise Ukrainian June 1 drone attack against its air bases. The Russian ground war has also picked up speed again. Moscow’s troops are advancing closer to the regional capital of Sumy in Ukraine’s northeast and claimed to have crossed into the Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time — which Kyiv denied.

At issue is the potential incursion by Moscow’s land forces into one of Ukraine’s most populous and industrialized areas. It would bring the war onto the soil of two provinces which so far haven’t been officially earmarked for annexation by President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian leader has demanded that Kyiv surrender all of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces, which Russia illegally annexed in 2022 but doesn’t fully control. That’s in addition to Crimea, which Kremlin forces seized in 2014.

After a phone call with Putin last week, Trump suggested that he might let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a little while” before attempting to broker a peace deal.

Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022, has also demanded Ukraine accept a neutral status and agree to limits on its army and foreign military aid.

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—With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska.