Russia and Ukraine swap more prisoners of war, Moscow says
MOSCOW - Russia and Ukraine exchanged more prisoners of war on Tuesday, the Russian defence ministry said, without giving details of the numbers involved.
The exchange was agreed between the two sides at talks in Istanbul last week, and an initial swap of prisoners under the age of 25 was conducted on Monday.
The defence ministry in Moscow said the Russians freed in the latest handover were currently in Belarus, which borders both the warring countries, and would be returned to Russia for medical treatment and rehabilitation.
Earlier, the Kremlin said it had been ready for several days to start handing over the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war, but that Kyiv was still discussing the details.
The planned transfer of thousands of war dead was the other tangible result of the Istanbul talks, which resumed last month after a gap of more than three years but have made no progress towards a ceasefire.
Russia has said it is ready to hand over the bodies of more than 6,000 Ukrainian soldiers and receive any bodies of Russian soldiers which Kyiv is able to return.
But Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said on Saturday that the Russian side had shown up at the agreed exchange point with the bodies of 1,212 Ukrainian dead soldiers only to find nobody from Ukraine to take them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Moscow of "trying to play some kind of dirty political and information game" around the issue of the exchanges.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday: "There is no final understanding. Contact is being made, numbers are being compared. As soon as there is a final understanding, then we hope this exchange will take place."
Russian state media has broadcast images of long white refrigerated trucks, containing bodies sealed in individual white bags, parked up near the border. REUTERS
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