Ukraine announced on Wednesday June 29 that it had exchanged 144 soldiers with Russia, including 95 “Azovstal defendersin Mariupol (southeast), who had defended this port city besieged by the Russian army for several weeks before surrendering.
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“This is the biggest exchange (with Moscow) since the beginning of the Russian invasion“, declared on Telegram the Main Directorate of Intelligence, attached to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, without giving more details on the place and the date of the operation. “Among them are 43 servicemen of the Azov regiment“, a unit integrated for several years in the Ukrainian army but which Moscow describes as “naziadded the Ukrainian intelligence service. They were exchanged with 52 other servicemen who were also in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol at the time of the Russian assault. “Most“exchanged prisoners”are seriously injured», «by bullets or shrapnel“, but also suffer”burns, fractures“, according to the same source.
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“They all receive care – medical and psychologicaladded Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, which announced on Tuesday the release of 17 prisoners as part of another exchange with Russia. kyiv and Moscow have carried out several prisoner exchanges since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The latest officially announced before these two exchanges took place in early May and involved 41 Ukrainians. The two countries also exchanged bodies of killed soldiers in mid-June, which enabled Ukraine to recover the remains of 64 defenders of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.
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