UN chief hopes for all-for-all prisoner swap between Russia, Ukraine
New Delhi: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is hopeful that Russia and Ukraine will carry out an all-for-all prisoner exchange.
“Yesterday’s news that more than 250 prisoners of war were exchanged between Ukraine and the Russian Federation was a welcome development. I commend the efforts of both parties and hope they will build on this with further exchanges aiming at an ‘all-for-all’ formula,” Guterres pointed out at a UN Security Council ministerial meeting on Ukraine.
The UN chief also thanked the Turkish government “for its role in securing this agreement.”
Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Denis Pushilin said earlier on Thursday that 215 prisoners, including members of Ukrainian nationalist battalions, had been handed over to Kyiv in exchange for 55 military servicemen and Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk.
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014. The invasion caused Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II, with around 7.4 million Ukrainians fleeing the country and a third of the population displaced.
