Ukraine: Early Thursday, Ukraine announced the end of months of work to release several Ukrainian fighters who defended a steel plant in Mariupol during a protracted Russian siege.
In return, Ukraine left a supporter of Vladimir Putin in Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that his administration had freed 215 Ukrainian and foreign nationals from Russian custody. Many of them, he claimed, were soldiers and officers killed in Russian-occupied territory.
Russian officials did not immediately confirm the trade or provide any other comment.
Only one person, pro-Russian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian, was traded out of a total of 200 Ukrainians.
Days before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the 68-year-old oligarch went under house arrest, but was again captured in April.
He was charged with treason and aiding and abetting a terrorist organization to arrange coal purchases for the separatist, Russia-backed Donetsk Republic in eastern Ukraine, and could face a life sentence if convicted.
Medvedchuk's youngest daughter is reportedly named after Putin. The heated conversation between the Moscow and Kyiv authorities was brought on by his detention.
The leader of the largest opposition faction in the Ukrainian parliament, the pro-Russian Platform-for-Life party, Medvedchuk is in charge of the political council. The government has banned the functioning of the party.
"It's not a pity to leave Medvedchuk to the real warriors," Zelensky wrote on his website. “They have passed every legal investigative process. Everything they needed was given by them to help Ukraine prove the truth during criminal proceedings.
According to Zelensky, in a separate exchange, Ukraine received the release of five more civilians in exchange for the 55 Russian prisoners it held.
Zelensky claimed that many of those liberated belonged to Heroes of the Azov Regiment of Ukraine.
In mid-May, the nearly three-month-long siege of the port city of Mariupol came to an end when more than 2,000 defenders, many of them members of the Azov unit, moved from the twisted ruins of the Azovstal Steel Plant to Russian captivity.
According to a post on Zelensky's website, five of the liberated Azov commanders are currently living in Turkey.
Zelensky reported that ten prisoners of war from countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom were sent to Saudi Arabia as part of the exchange between Moscow and Kyiv.
Americans Alexander Drucke, 39, of Alabama, and Andy Huynh, 27, both captured in June during fighting in eastern Ukraine, were among the prisoners released.
Britons Aiden Aslin and Sean Piner, as well as Morocco's Brahim Saadoun, who had been sentenced to death by a court in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic, were also released.
A large number of foreigners have come to fight in Ukraine since the Russian invasion.
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