Russia and Ukraine swap 218 prisoners, including 108 Ukrainian women

A total of 218 women have walked free, including dozens captured during the Azovstal steelworks siege. Watch the video.

A view of Kyiv during a rolling blackout of parts of districts of the Ukrainian capital following rocket attacks to critical infrastructures, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Picture: Eugene Kotenko / AFP.

Russia and Ukraine carried out one of the biggest prisoner swaps of the war so far, exchanging a total of 218 detainees — including 108 Ukrainian women, officials on both sides say.

A total of 218 detainees, including 108 Ukrainian women and 110 Russians, were involved in the exchange, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his latest national address.

“The next stage of the release of our people from Russian captivity took place,” he said.

“We managed to return 108 Ukrainian women: officers, sergeants, privates, army, navy, territorial defence, national guards, border guards.”

This handout picture taken ad released by Ukrainian presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak shows freed Ukrainian female prisoners posing for a picture after their exchange in an unknown location in Ukraine. Picture: AFP

Most of the Russians freed are sailors from merchant ships held in Ukraine and also included members of pro-Russian separatist military units from the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

In daylight photos released by Ukraine officials, women can be seen boarding coaches in an unspecified area and later of them arriving after dark in government-held territory in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia.

The Ukrainian presidency‘s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, confirmed on social media that 108 women had been released in the “first all-female exchange”.

He said they included mothers and daughters who had been held captive together.

‘MASSIVE BLACKOUTS’ ACROSS UKRAINE

Ukraine is facing a “critical” risk to its power grid as it approaches winter after repeated Russian bombardments destroyed a staggering one-third of the country’s power facilities in just one week.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued the warning on Tuesday as Russian forces claimed to have retaken territory from Ukrainian troops in the eastern Kharkiv region, Moscow’s first announced capture of a village there since being nearly entirely pushed out of the region last month.

A factory lies in ruins after being destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian occupying forces in Kharkiv. Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images

A man loads his vehicle with jerry cans after Russian attacks cause widespread blackouts. Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images

A woman walks past a building damaged in Kozacha Lopan after 30 per cent of the country's power stations were destroyed in Russian attacks. Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images

Mr Zelenskyy said that 30 per cent of Ukraine’s power stations had been destroyed in the past eight days.

At the same time, Russian attacks rocked energy facilities in Kyiv and urban centres across the country, causing blackouts and disrupting water supplies, one day after the capital was bombarded with a swarm of suicide drones.

“The situation is critical now across the country. It’s necessary for the whole country to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, told Ukrainian television.

Parts of the capital Kyiv have no power and water after new strikes on Tuesday.

Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said that all three victims of the latest Russian strikes were employees of “critical infrastructure”, adding that two facilities in the capital had been hit.

“In the period from October 7 to 18, as a result of shelling of energy facilities, about 4,000 settlements in 11 regions (of Ukraine) were cut off. “Currently, according to the energy ministry, 1,162 settlements remain without power,” emergencies services spokesman Oleksandr Khorunzhyi said at Tuesday’s briefing in Kyiv.

A view of Kyiv during a rolling blackout of parts of districts of the Ukrainian capital following rocket attacks to critical infrastructures, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Picture: Eugene Kotenko / AFP

The strikes in the early hours of Tuesday hit Kyiv, Kharkiv in the east, Mykolaiv in the south and central regions of Dnipro and Zhytomyr, where officials said hospitals were running on backup generators.

But drones also bombarded Kyiv on Monday – the second in a row – leaving five dead, officials said, in what the presidency described as an attack of desperation after a string of battlefield losses.

Mr Zelenskyy called the repeated targeting of energy infrastructure “another kind of Russian terrorist attacks”.

“Since October 10, 30 per cent of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country,” the Ukrainian leader said on Twitter.

HOSPITALS ON BACK-UP POWER

Many towns and cities in the Zhytomyr region, west of Kyiv, and parts of the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine were without electricity, while power was restored to the southern city of Mykolaiv after strikes overnight.

“Now the city is cut off from electricity and water supplies. Hospitals are working on backup power,” the mayor of Zhytomyr, Sergiy Sukhomlyn, said in a statement online.

Tetyana Telyzhenko at the duneral of her son, whose body has been missing since his capture in Russia's aborted assault on Kyiv in the first weeks of Russia's invasion. Picture: Sergei Supinsky / AFP

The national emergency services said that after 10 days of strikes on energy facilities, some 1,162 towns and villages in nine regions had been left without power and more than 70 people were killed and 290 injured.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said three people had been killed in Tuesday’s strikes.

Mr Zelenskyy earlier said the fresh wave of nationwide strikes – which he said had damaged a residential building and flower market in Mykolaiv – was a Russian attempt to “terrorise and kill civilians.”

KREMLIN DENIES IRAN DRONE USE

Following the wave of kamikaze drone attacks against Kyiv on Monday, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba demanded EU sanctions on Iran, accusing Tehran of providing Russia with drones.

But on Tuesday, he said Ukraine should cut diplomatic ties with Iran, citing the “death” and “destruction” caused by the drones.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday it had no knowledge of its army using Iranian drones in Ukraine.

“Russian tech is being used,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, referring other questions to the defence ministry.

The defence ministry did however confirm strikes on energy facilities over the past 24 hours, saying it had used long-range and precision weapons.

Iran has denied exporting any weapons to either side, but the United States warned it would take action against companies and nations working with Tehran’s drone program following the strikes in Kyiv.

Western officials however said it was “increasingly evident that Russia is pursuing a deliberate strategy of trying to destroy heating, electrical networks” and that Iranian drones were playing an “increasingly significant role” in the conflict.

Senior presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak meanwhile called for Russia to be excluded from the upcoming G20 summit.

With fighting ongoing across a sprawling frontline in east and southern Ukraine, its military said that over the past 24 hours it had shot down 38 Iranian-made Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles.

Russia announced a rare battlefield victory Tuesday, in the eastern Kharkiv region, saying its forces had captured the village of Gorobiivka.

It was the first claim of victory since Ukrainian forces in September reclaimed huge swathes of the east in a string of embarrassing battlefield defeats.

Moscow’s forces have also been pushing towards Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region, and with the fight edging closer, locals’ allegiances are spilling out into the public.

One shopper, Yulia, said she believed Ukrainian forces bombed cities that were about to be captured by Russia – repeating a conspiracy theory popular on social media.

“I don’t understand why Ukraine is destroying cities,” said the 46-year-old, who declined to give her surname saying that she was afraid of reprisals for her views.

Separately on Tuesday, Russian investigators said initial indications suggest that the crash of a military plane into a residential building near Ukraine was due to a technical malfunction.

Investigators said they were questioning the pilots of the Sukhoi Su-34, who managed to parachute out of the plane before it crashed on Monday evening into the nine-storey building, engulfing it in flames.

– With AFP

Originally published as Russia and Ukraine swap 218 prisoners, including 108 Ukrainian women