Russia has initiated talks with Ukraine on a prisoner exchange in Kursk region, Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets said on Thursday.
Human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova is participating in the talks from the Russian side, he said, while Kiev has already notified the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN about the prisoner situation.
A Financial Times source in Ukraine’s military intelligence confirmed the start of work on the exchange, but did not name the exact number of prisoners who could be returned.
According to the FT, a total of several hundred Russian soldiers, including conscripts guarding the border, could be captured by the AFU in the Kursk region. According to the Independent’s source among the Ukrainian military, the number of captives from the Russian side could be as high as 2,000. In the last week alone, about 200 Russian soldiers have been captured, an employee of one of the Ukrainian centers where prisoners are held told Sky News. Among them are conscript soldiers aged between 19 and 21 years.
On Thursday, it became known that 102 soldiers of the 488th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of the Russian Armed Forces and the Akhmat unit were taken into Ukrainian captivity on August 14. RBC Ukraine’s sources in the SSU claim that the largest single capture in the entire time of the AFU invasion of the Kursk region took place during an attack on a stronghold of one of the Russian companies.
Earlier, the Ukrainian project I Want to Live, which helps the Russian military surrender, published a video of Chechens from the Akhmat special forces. The footage shows several dozen people, most of them in military uniform. Three captives confirmed that they are from Grozny, one of them specified that he serves in Akhmat.
The captive could also be FPS employees near the town of Lgov, where there is a general regime colony FCU IK-3. This was reported by the telegram channel “VChK-OGPU”, posting a video with several people in military uniform lying on the ground. The FPS press service called this information “fake”.
