On 31 January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that Ukraine managed to return home 207 captives in a POW swap with Russia. Multiple sources indicate that Ukraine exchanged them for 195 Russian prisoners of war.

“Our guys are at home. 207 guys. We keep returning them no matter what. We remember each and every one of them in captivity. Soldiers and civilians. We have to return everyone. We are working on it,” Zelenskyy’s message on the Telegram messenger reads.

The President’s Office reported that among those released from Russian captivity are the “soldiers of the Armed Forces, the National Guard, the State Border Guard Service, and the National Police – privates, sergeants, and officers.”

“A lot of Mariupol defenders, soldiers who were at Azovstal, Zmiinyi Island, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Kherson, and Sumy directions,” the report reads.

It is the second large prisoner exchange after a few-month-long pause. Earlier, on 3 January, the largest POW swap since the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion occurred, as Kyiv returned home 230 Ukrainians – 225 men and five women – from captivity, exchanging them for 248 Russians.