The Russian Defense Ministry announced the exchange. Zelensky said most of the freed Ukrainian service members had been held captive since 2022, among them defenders of Mariupol, including members of the Azov regiment. Many of those returned had been convicted in Russia.
Five of the Ukrainians who came home had been considered killed in the strike on Olenivka in July 2022, Zelensky said.
The same day, the two sides exchanged seven civilians for seven. The Russian and Ukrainian human rights commissioners, Yana Lantratova and Dmytro Lubinets, said the handover took place on the territory of Belarus. According to Lantratova, the exchange reunited 12 families, and those returned include elderly people and people who had run into problems with their documents. The International Committee of the Red Cross assisted.
Lubinets said a 90-year-old woman with limited mobility and a 50-year-old woman who had suffered a heart attack and a stroke returned to Ukraine. A Ukrainian woman and her child, who were in Mariupol when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, also returned home.
According to the Ukrainian state project I Want to Find, Russia for the first time since 2025 included in exchange lists military personnel recruited in the occupied parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Irina Krynina, leader of the Our Exit public movement, told Novaya Gazeta Europe that thousands of Russian service members remain in captivity, including hundreds of residents of the "LNR" and "DNR".
The day before, the sides exchanged the bodies of dead service members: Russia handed Ukraine 252 bodies and received 25.
This is the 18th prisoner exchange since the start of 2026. The previous one took place on August 19 on a "103 for 103" basis.