Ukraine's stalled prisoner swaps with Russia to resume
Ukraine and Russia are preparing to resume their stalled exchanges of prisoners of war, Kyiv’s former defence minister Rustem Umerov says.
The process is expected to restart soon with the aim of bringing back 1200 Ukrainian soldiers from Russian captivity, said Umerov, who is now secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.
He said he had held talks, on the instructions of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, with mediators in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to revive the prisoner exchanges.
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Umerov led Ukraine’s negotiating delegation in talks with Russia earlier this year.
The most important outcome of the negotiations in May and June was an agreement on prisoner exchanges, which proceeded in the following months but have since stalled.
The talks between Moscow and Kiev on ending the war, which has lasted more than three and a half years, have also been put on hold since Umerov’s transfer.
