Planned Russia-Ukraine prisoner swap descends into blame game and uncertainty
Russia said Ukraine unexpectedly postponed a transfer involving prisoners of war and the bodies of dead soldiers, leaving more than 1,200 frozen Ukrainian bodies waiting in refrigerated trucks at an exchange point with no one to collect them.
Ukraine rejected Russia's account of the events, saying that the two sides had agreed to exchange seriously wounded and young troops on Saturday but a date had not yet been set for the repatriation of soldiers' bodies.
During a second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Monday, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange more prisoners this weekend. Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia's delegation for peace talks with Ukraine, said this week that the exchange would be the largest since of the three-year war.
'In strict accordance with the Istanbul agreements, the Russian side began a humanitarian operation to transfer more than 6,000 bodies of killed Ukrainian servicemen,' as well as badly wounded soldiers under the age of 25, Medinsky said Saturday afternoon on Telegram.
He claimed that 1,212 bodies of killed Ukrainian soldiers were at the exchange point, with the rest 'on their way.' He also said that Russia gave Ukraine the first list of 640 prisoners of war for exchange, listed as 'wounded, seriously ill and young people,' in order to start the swap.
In a video posted by Russia's Defense Ministry on Telegram, two men wearing hazmat suits are seen opening the doors to the back of a truck parked on the side of a road. Inside the truck were dozens of sealed white bags, which the ministry said contained the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.
Medinsky said Russia's Defense Ministry contact group was waiting at the border with Ukraine, but alleged that Kyiv had 'unexpectedly postponed the transfer of bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war for an indefinite period' and had given 'pretty weird reasons' for doing so.
Ukraine swiftly rejected the accusations, saying Medinsky's claims 'do not correspond to reality.' It said the exchange of prisoners of war and soldiers' bodies were separate processes.
'Unfortunately, instead of constructive dialogue, we are again faced with manipulations and attempts to use sensitive humanitarian issues for informational purposes,' Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War wrote on Telegram.
'We call on the Russian side to stop playing dirty games,' it added.
Ukraine's Defense Ministry said Russia was creating 'artificial obstacles' and making 'false statements' to obstruct the exchange of living prisoners, reneging on what had been agreed in Istanbul.
'The Ukrainian side has faced yet another attempt to renege on the agreements after the fact,' the ministry said.
Although prisoner of war swaps had been a rare point of agreement between the warring countries, the unraveling of Saturday's scheduled exchange underscores the lack of trust that has so far marred the peace talks.
The spat came soon after Russia launched another aerial assault on Ukraine, killing three people in the city of Kharkiv.
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