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Holidays/Ukrainians hope for a prisoner exchange with Russia

2024-12-28 08:43:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Holidays/Ukrainians hope for a prisoner exchange with Russia

Ukrainians are hoping for a prisoner swap with Russia by the end of the year, although the deal could fall through at the last minute.

Petro Yatsenko, of Ukraine's Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said negotiations with Moscow over a prisoner exchange had become more difficult in recent months since Russian forces began making significant advances on the front line.

Only 10 prisoners were exchanged in 2024, the lowest number since the full-scale occupation began. Ukraine does not release the numbers of prisoners of war held by Russia, but the total is thought to be over 8,000.

One of those brought home in the last exchange, in September 2024, is Ukrainian sailor Andriy Turas. In an apartment in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, Andriy and his wife Lena tell me the extraordinary story of their ordeal. Both were captured while defending the city of Mariupol in 2022.

"They lectured us about how Ukraine never existed," Lena says of the Russian captors. " They tried to exterminate our Ukrainian identity in our heads".

"They beat us mercilessly, with fists, sticks, hammers, anything they could find," Andriy says.

"They stripped us naked in the cold and forced us to crawl on the asphalt. Our legs were torn and we were terrified and frozen."





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