Ukraine offers to swap Russian prisoners with injured Mariupol soldiers

OFFICIALS in Kyiv, Ukraine have offered a swap deal with Russia for the release of their injured soldiers at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol in exchange for Russian prisoners.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said on Wednesday, May 11 that Ukraine was prepared to offer Moscow the opportunity for Russian prisoners of war to be released in a swap deal that would see the evacuation of Ukrainian fighters injured and trapped inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

Iryna Vereshchuk revealed that negotiations were underway and suggested that although the situation wasn’t ideal, it was the only option to get the soldiers out of the facility in the war-torn Ukrainian city.

According to Ukrainian reports, 700 wounded soldiers are holed up in the steel plant among a reported 2,500 Ukraine fighters left in the facility.

Continued fighting at the plant has meant that many have been trapped under rubble – the same fate that met 44 civilians in Izyum, whose bodies were found nearly two months after a building was destroyed by Russian forces.

The Evening Standard noted that Kyiv and Moscow have been exchanging prisoners of war since the invasion began on February 24.

In fact, back in March, a web post from the Ukraine army said that it would give Russian soldiers captured during the invasion back to their mothers, literally.

The post stated that all Russian mothers needed to do was make it to the Ukrainian border and they would be able to meet their sons in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv.

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