Russia, Ukraine begin largest prisoner swap since start of war

Russia and Ukraine each released 390 prisoners on Friday and said they would free more in the coming days, in what is expected to be the biggest prisoner swap of the war so far.

The agreement to exchange 1,000 prisoners each was the only concrete step towards peace to emerge last week from the first direct talks between the warring sides in more than three years, when they failed to agree a ceasefire.

Both sides said they had each released 270 soldiers and 120 civilians so far, with more due to be released on Saturday and Sunday.

"Today, almost 400 people are home," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a televised address that confirmed the plan for both sides to release 1,000 in the coming days.

"We will definitely return everyone. Every one of our citizens."

The released Ukrainians arrived at a hospital in the northern Chernihiv region in buses and filed out, pale, most of them with shaven heads and wrapped in Ukrainian flags.

"I didn’t believe until this moment that it could happen," said Oleksandr Tarasov, 38, from Mykolaiv, who was captured a year and nine months ago on the Kherson front after its recapture by Ukraine in 2022.

"I’m just happy I made it back… I just want to speak to my loved ones," he said.

The freed Russians are currently in Belarus, which neighbours Ukraine, receiving psychological and medical assistance before being moved to Russia for further care, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

They include civilians captured inside Russia's Kursk region during a Ukrainian incursion.

Referring to the prisoner swap earlier on Friday, US President Donald Trump, who had pressed the sides to meet last week, wrote on Truth Social: "Congratulations to both sides on this negotiation. This could lead to something big???"

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been wounded or killed in Europe's deadliest war since World War Two, although neither side publishes accurate casualty figures.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also died as Russian forces have besieged and bombarded Ukrainian cities.

Ukraine says it is ready for a 30-day ceasefire immediately.

Russia, which launched the war by invading its neighbour in 2022 and now occupies about a fifth of Ukraine, says it will not pause its assaults until conditions are met first. A member of the Ukrainian delegation called those conditions "non-starters".

Trump, who has shifted US policy from supporting Kyiv towards accepting some of Moscow's account of the war, had said he could tighten sanctions on Russia if it blocked peace. But after speaking to Putin on Monday he decided to take no action for now.

Defence Minister Rustem Umerov told reporters at the hospital that the swap was "the first stage" and that Kyiv still hoped to secure a ceasefire.

"Ukraine wants the ceasefire. And we hope that the US will support Ukraine in achieving the ceasefire," he said.

Moscow says it is ready for talks while the fighting goes on, and wants to discuss what it calls the war's "root causes", including its demands Ukraine cede more territory, and be disarmed and barred from military alliances with the West.

Kyiv says that is tantamount to surrender and would leave it defenceless in the face of future Russian attacks.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday Moscow would hand Kyiv a draft document outlining its conditions for a long-term peace agreement once the current prisoner exchange is completed.

Russia claimed on Friday to have captured a settlement called Rakivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region.

The governor of Ukraine's Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, said Russia had struck port infrastructure there with two missiles on Friday afternoon, killing one person and wounding eight.

Near the hospital in the Chernihiv region, dozens of people, mostly women, stood in line along a street holding up photographs of men as they waited for the POWs to arrive.

Many said they had relatives who were missing in action and that they had come to find out any news they could from those who had just been released.

"It’s very difficult," said Oksana Astapenko, carrying her daughter Anhelina on her shoulders and tearing up as she spoke.

"We're still hoping. We don't know if he's in captivity or not… he's just missing. We're hoping for positive news that he's there."