Russia and Ukraine will exchange severely wounded prisoners of war on Thursday, Moscow announced Wednesday, marking a new step in an agreement reached during recent talks in Istanbul, Turkey.
“Tomorrow, we will begin urgent ‘medical exchanges’ of severely wounded prisoners,” Russian chief negotiator Vladimir Medinski stated on social media. He added that Russia had also recovered the bodies of 27 of its soldiers killed in combat.
Ukraine, for its part, reported Wednesday that it had recovered the bodies of 1,212 of its fallen soldiers. “The bodies of 1,212 defenders killed in action have been brought back to Ukraine,” said the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters, the governmental body in charge of prisoner affairs.
