Russia, Ukraine swap 300 prisoners in major deal
Hundreds of prisoners of war have been freed and will be home for New Year’s Day in an unprecedented exchange. Follow updates.
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Russia and Ukraine swapped more than 300 prisoners of war in an exchange brokered by the United Arab Emirates ahead of New Year’s Eve, officials from both countries said.
The two sides have exchanged hundreds of captive soldiers since Russia began its military assault on Ukraine in February 2022, in one of the few areas of cooperation.
“On 30 December, as a result of the negotiation process, 150 Russian servicemen were returned from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime. In return, 150 Ukrainian army prisoners of war were handed over,” the Russian defence ministry said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv received 189 people as part of the deal, including soldiers, border guards and two civilians from the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol.
“We are working to free everyone from Russian captivity. This is our goal. We do not forget anyone,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine said Moscow had released a total of 3,956 people — soldiers and civilians — in deals with Kyiv since the start of the conflict.
Both sides said the latest exchange had been brokered by the United Arab Emirates.
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RUSSIA TO ‘PUNISH THOSE RESPONSIBLE’ FOR JET CRASH
Azerbaijan said that Moscow had promised to punish those responsible for the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane that Baku says was shot at by Russian air defences.
The AZAL Embraer 190 jet crash-landed in Kazakhstan on December 25, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has demanded that Moscow accept responsibility for mistakenly shooting the plane as it tried to make a scheduled landing at Grozny airport in south Russia.
Russia has not confirmed that one of its air-defence missiles hit the plane, though President Vladimir Putin told Aliyev in a phone call over the weekend that the systems were active at the time and that he was sorry the incident took place in Russian airspace.
Azerbaijan’s General Prosecutor said in a statement Monday that the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee had told Baku: “Intensive measures are being carried out to identify the guilty people and bring them to criminal responsibility.” Russia has opened a criminal inquiry into the incident but has not said whether it agrees that the plane was hit by one of its air-defence missiles, and has not said anything about finding or bringing any perpetrators to justice.
Aliyev had issued a rare forthright condemnation of Moscow - a close partner of Baku - on Sunday.
He said the plane was “hit by accident” but was angry that Russia had apparently tried to hide the cause of the crash.
Demanding that Putin admit responsibility, Aliyev also accused Russia of putting forward alternative theories that “clearly showed the Russian side wanted to cover up the issue”.
Russia said Grozny, in the southern Russian region of Chechnya, was being attacked by Ukrainian drones when the plane approached to make its landing through thick fog.
Survivors have described hearing explosions outside the plane, which then diverted more than 400 kilometres across the Caspian Sea towards the Kazakh city of Aktau, where it crash-landed.
AZERBAIJAN DIRECTLY BLAMES RUSSIA FOR CRASH
It comes as the Azerbaijani President directly blamed Russia for the crash.
President Ilham Aliyev called on Moscow to accept responsibility and urged compensation for the victims.
Mr Aliyev said he regretted that “some circles” in Russia had tried to cover up the truth about the crash by sowing false narratives.
A vague apology for the “tragic incident” offered by Vladimir Putin on Saturday was not enough, he said.
Flight J2-8243 crashed on Wednesday in a ball of fire near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from southern Russia where Ukrainian drones were reported to be attacking several cities.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Russia to provide clear explanations posting on X: “The key priority now is a thorough investigation to provide answers to all questions about what really happened.
“Russia must provide clear explanations and stop spreading disinformation.”
NORTH KOREAN TROOPS DIE IN CAPTIVITY
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “several” wounded North Korean soldiers died after being captured by Ukrainian forces, as he accused Russia of throwing them into battle with “minimal protection”.
Ukraine and its western allies say North Korea has sent thousands of soldiers to support Russia’s army, in what is seen as a major escalation in the nearly three-year war following Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
“Today there were reports about several soldiers from North Korea. Our soldiers managed to take them prisoner. But they were very seriously wounded and could not be resuscitated,” Zelenskyy said in an evening address posted on social media.
South Korea’s spy agency said earlier that a North Korean soldier who was captured while fighting in Russia’s war against Ukraine had died of his wounds.
Zelenskyy did not specify how many North Koreans had died after being captured by Ukrainian troops.
Zelenskyy had earlier said that nearly 3000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or wounded” so far as they joined Russia’s forces in combat in its western Kursk border region, where Ukraine mounted a shock incursion in August.
The White House confirmed the South Korean estimates, saying that Pyongyang’s troops were being sent to their deaths in futile attacks by generals who see them as “expendable”.
“We also have reports of North Korean soldiers taking their own lives rather than surrendering to Ukrainian forces, likely out of fear of reprisal against their families in North Korea in the event that they’re captured,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
North Korea and Russia have strengthened their military ties since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A landmark defence pact between Pyongyang and Moscow signed in June came into force this month, with Russian President Vladimir Putin hailing it as a “breakthrough document”.
‘WHY NOT?’: PUTIN FLOATS PEACE TALKS WITH UKRAINE
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared he is “not opposed” to Slovakia acting as the neutral host country for peace negotiations with Ukraine after the Slovak leader made the offer during a visit to Moscow.
Putin welcomed Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico to the Kremlin and afterwards told Russian media the Slovaks had indicated they “would be happy to provide their own country as a platform for negotiations.”
“We are not opposed, if it comes to that,” Putin said.
“Why not? Since Slovakia takes such a neutral position.”
RUSSIA UNCOVERS UKRAINIAN ASSASSINATION PLOTS
Russia’s Federal Security Service has revealed it foiled several plots by Ukrainian intelligence services to kill high-ranking Russian officers and their families in Moscow using bombs disguised as power banks or document folders.
Last week, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, in Moscow outside his apartment building by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
An SBU source confirmed to reporters that the Ukrainian intelligence agency had been behind the hit.
Russia said the killing was a terrorist attack by Ukraine, with which it has been at war since February 2022, and vowed revenge.
“The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation has prevented a series of assassination attempts on high-ranking military personnel of the Defence Ministry,” the FSB said.
“Four Russian citizens involved in the preparation of these attacks have been detained,” it said in a statement.
Ukraine’s SBU has not commented on the allegations.
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that the Russian citizens had been recruited by the Ukrainian intelligence services.
One of the men retrieved a bomb disguised as a portable charger in Moscow that was to be attached with magnets to the car of one of the Defence Ministry’s top officials, the FSB said.
Another Russian man was tasked with reconnaissance of senior Russian defence officials, it said, with one plot involving the delivery of a bomb disguised as a document folder.
“An explosive device disguised as a portable charger (power bank), with magnets attached, had to be placed under the official car of one of the senior leaders of the Russian Defence Ministry,” it said.
The exact date of the planned attacks was unclear though one of the suspects said he had retrieved a bomb on December 23, according to the FSB.
Russian state TV showed what it said was footage of some of the suspects who admitted to being recruited by Ukrainian intelligence for bombings against Russian defence ministry officials.
Moscow holds Ukraine responsible for a string of high-profile assassinations on its soil designed to weaken morale – and says the West is supporting a “terrorist regime” in Kyiv.
Ukraine, which says Russia’s war against it poses an existential threat to the Ukrainian state, has made clear it regards such targeted killings as a legitimate tool.
Darya Dugina, the 29-year-old daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, was killed in August 2022 near Moscow.
The New York Times reported that US intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorised the killing.
US officials later admonished Ukrainian officials over the assassination, the Times said. Ukraine denied it killed Dugina.
ZELENSKYY SLAMS RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS BLITZ
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has denounced an “inhumane” attack from Russia, which launched over 170 missiles and drones on his war-torn country’s power grid on Christmas Day, killing an energy worker.
The country woke at dawn to an air raid alarm, shortly followed by air force reports that Russia had launched Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea.
“Putin deliberately chose Christmas to attack. What could be more inhumane? More than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than a hundred attack drones. The target is our energy system,” Zelensky said.
This was the 13th large-scale strike on Ukraine’s energy system this year, the latest in Russia’s campaign targeting the power grid during winter.
Russia meanwhile said five people had died in Ukrainian strikes and a falling drone in the border region of Kursk and in North Ossetia in the Caucasus.
Ukraine said its air force downed 58 out of 79 Russian-launched missiles. It did not, however, down the two Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles launched by Russia.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the strikes.
“I pay tribute to the resilience of the Ukrainian people, and the leadership of President Zelenskyy, in the face of further drone and missile attacks from Putin’s bloody and brutal war machine with no respite even at Christmas,” Starmer said.
Ukraine’s DTEK energy company said the attack severely damaged equipment of thermal power plants.
“Denying light and warmth to millions of peace-loving people as they celebrate Christmas is a depraved and evil act that must be answered,” DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko said, urging allies to send more air defence.
The employee of a Ukrainian thermal power plant was killed in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, over which 42 missiles were shot down, governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Lysak also said rescue operations had been completed on the site of a strike on Kryvyi Rig, which killed one person and wounded 17 others the day before.
Engineers have restored power to consumers in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. “Christmas morning has once again shown that nothing is sacred for the aggressor country,” Svitlana Onyshchuk, the head of the Ivano-Frankivsk region, said earlier.
Ukraine is officially celebrating Christmas on December 25 for the second time. The government last year changed the date from January 7, when most Orthodox believers celebrate, as a snub to Russia.
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