Large-scale prisoner exchange: Zelensky announced the next return of Ukrainians

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this, stressing that 390 Ukrainians - both military and civilian - had already returned home today. This is the first stage of the largest exchange agreed at the talks in Turkey on 16 May.

According to Zelenskyy, the release of the prisoners was the main and actually the only result of the meeting of the Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul, as "the Russians are blocking everything else so far". The president noted that the release of prisoners is a permanent priority of the Ukrainian state: "We will definitely return everyone - each of our citizens, each military officer, each civilian, all Ukrainian hostages who are being held in Russia".

The exchange will take place in stages. As the head of state specified, as of today 390 people have already returned, and the next stages are planned for the next few days. The formula - "1000 by 1000" - assumes mutual release of a thousand people on each side.

Zelensky thanked everyone who took part in the preparation of the operation: law enforcers, diplomats, military and medical personnel. He also expressed gratitude to Ukrainian servicemen who ensure replenishment of the exchange fund on the frontline, as well as to law enforcers who detain Russian saboteurs and collaborators.

Ukraine started preparing for the exchange immediately after the agreement in Turkey. Vadym Skibitsky, a representative of the Defence Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate, said that the relevant lists had been formed, while the Security Service of Ukraine carried out preparations together with the Joint Centre for the Coordination of the Release of Captives. Medical and logistical resources - from infrastructure and transport to rehabilitation teams - were prepared in advance.

Earlier Socialportal wrote about the story of Ukrainian human rights defender Maksym Butkevych, who spent more than two years in Russian captivity. Maksym was sentenced to 13 years in the Russian Federation on a trumped-up case, which claimed that he was an extremist who ran a detachment of far-right radicals. These charges shocked everyone who knew Maksim. He was a human rights activist for decades, co-founder of the organisation Without Borders, and one of the few people in Ukraine who cared about the fate of asylum seekers, refugees, and foreign students who faced arbitrariness, rudeness, and intolerance. He also helped political refugees stemming from authoritarian regimes, most notably Putin's.

The 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner exchange is the largest ever in a full-scale war and the first on this scale since the beginning of 2022.