Ukraine is working to resume prisoner exchanges with Russia that could bring 1,200 Ukrainians home, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says, a day after his national security chief announced progress in negotiations.
“We are … counting on the resumption of POW exchanges,” Zelenskyy wrote on X on Sunday. “Many meetings, negotiations and calls are currently taking place to ensure this.”
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Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said on Saturday that he held consultations mediated by Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates on resuming prisoner of war exchanges, which the two sides have carried out successfully multiple times.
He said the parties agreed to activate prisoner exchange agreements brokered in Istanbul to release 1,200 Ukrainians.
The Istanbul agreements refer to prisoner exchange protocols established with Turkish mediation in 2022 that set rules for large, coordinated swaps. Since then, Russia and Ukraine have traded thousands of prisoners although the exchanges have been sporadic.
But the swaps have been the only progress of any note in talks between the two sides as the war rages on and another punishing winter approaches with oil and energy sites being targeted by both Moscow and Kyiv.
Authorities in Moscow did not immediately comment on the issue.
Umerov said technical consultations would be held soon to finalise procedural and organisational details, expressing hope that returning Ukrainians could “celebrate the New Year and Christmas holidays at home – at the family table and next to their relatives”.
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Meanwhile, Finnish President Alexander Stubb told The Associated Press news agency that a ceasefire in Ukraine is unlikely before the spring and European allies need to keep up support despite a corruption scandal that has engulfed Kyiv.
Europe, meanwhile, will require “sisu”, a Finnish word meaning endurance, resilience and grit, to get through the winter, he said, as Russia continues its hybrid attacks and information war across the continent.
“I’m not very optimistic about achieving a ceasefire or the beginning of peace negotiations, at least this year,” Stubb said, commenting that it would be good to “get something going” by March.
In other developments, energy infrastructure was damaged by Russian drone strikes overnight into Sunday in Ukraine’s Odesa region, the State Emergency Service said. A solar power plant was among the damaged sites.
Ukraine is desperately trying to fend off relentless Russian aerial attacks that have brought rolling blackouts across Ukraine on the brink of winter.
Combined missile and drone strikes on the power grid have coincided with Ukraine’s efforts to hold back a Russian battlefield push aimed at capturing the eastern stronghold of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.
Russia launched 176 drones and fired one missile overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday, adding that Ukrainian forces shot down or neutralised 139 drones.
Ukrainian forces struck a major oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region along with a warehouse storing drones for the elite Rubicon drone unit in partially Russian-occupied Donetsk, Ukraine’s general staff said on Sunday. Russian officials did not immediately confirm the attacks.
Months of long-range Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries are aimed at depriving Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue the war.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Sunday that its forces shot down 57 Ukrainian drones overnight.
It also said its troops had captured the settlements of Mala Tokmachka and Rivnopillya in eastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region.
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