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BREAKING: Ukraine, Russia begin biggest POW swap since start of Russian invasion in 2014

Ukraine and Russia on May 23 began the largest exchange of prisoners of war (POWs) since the start of Russian aggression in 2014, a Kyiv Independent journalist reported from the site of the swap.

Russia's Defense Ministry said that 270 soldiers and 120 civilians had returned to Russia as part of the first stage of the swap.

The exchange will see 1,000 POWs from both sides return home, in a deal agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on May 16, the first such talks between Moscow and Kyiv since 2022.

The Ukrainian and Russian governments confirmed they had received the lists of POWs to be exchanged on May 22.

President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on the same day that he held a meeting to prepare the exchange and called the agreement on the POW swap the only "real" result of the meeting between the two delegations in Istanbul.

"The agreement on the release of 1000 of our people from Russian captivity was almost the only real result of the meeting in Turkey. We are working to ensure this result. We are finding out the details of each person listed on the Russian side," Zelensky said.

According to the President's Office chief Andriy Yermak, diplomatic representatives of the Nordic and Baltic countries also participated in preparing for the swap. He added that after the 1000-for-1000 exchange is completed, future direct talks with Russian officials could be arranged.

At least 8,000 Ukrainian service members are held captive by Russia, Iryna Vereshchuk, Presidential Office deputy head, said on May 1, citing data from Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of POWs.

Kyiv does not release the figures for how many Russian POWs are currently in Ukrainian custody.

While ceasefire agreements and peace talks have remained elusive since the start of the full-scale invasion, regular prisoner swaps have remained one of the few areas of ongoing cooperation between the two countries.

Ukraine has long advocated for an "all-for-all" exchange, but Russia has so far resisted the proposal.

The latest exchange included only soldiers, but Zelensky has previously said that Ukraine is working to return journalists and political prisoners from Russian captivity as well.

On May 20, the head of the Ukrainian National Union of Journalists, Serhii Tomilenko, handed over a list of Ukrainian media workers held in Russian captivity to the Vatican's ambassador to Ukraine, Visvaldas Kulbokas. According to the union, at least 31 Ukrainian journalists are being illegally detained by Russia.

Russia has a common practice of sentencing captured Ukrainian journalists to long prison terms on fabricated charges and holding them captive in harsh conditions under physical and psychological pressure, which in most cases amounts to torture, Yurii Vitrenko, a permanent representative of Ukraine to international organizations in Vienna, said on April 10 during a regular meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council.

Russian forces have also killed 103 media workers during the full-scale invasion, according to the Ukraine's Culture Ministry.

Among those killed was Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, whose body Ukraine brought back in April. Roshchyna's body showed signs of torture and was missing some internal organs, which may be deliberately removed to obscure signs of suffocation or strangulation, according to an investigation by the Forbidden Stories journalism network.

Russia also illegally detains at least 16,000 Ukrainian civilians, of whom only 174 have been returned, according to Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.

Lubinets stressed that a country that occupies the territory of another has no right to detain civilians, according to the Geneva Conventions. "Unfortunately, international humanitarian law does not answer the question of how to respond if Russia continues this illegal practice," he added.

Another area of Ukraine's efforts to bring back its citizens is related to the return of Ukrainian children.

Over 19,500 children have been forcibly deported to Russia, Belarus, or the occupied territories, according to government data. So far, only about 1,300 of them have been safely brought to Ukrainian government-controlled territory.

Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territories are placed in families or Russian camps, where they are known to be subjected to intense anti-Ukrainian propaganda, and at times, military training.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has also taken up the matter. In March 2023, it issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over their involvement in abductions.

On May 8, the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning Russia's forcible deportation and Russification of Ukrainian children, calling it a "genocidal strategy" aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity and demanding the unconditional return of all abducted minors.