Ukraine and Russia exchange wounded, ill prisoners of war

Ukraine and Russia exchanged another group of ill and severely wounded servicemen on Thursday, officials from both countries said.

All of the Ukrainian troops need treatment, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a message on the Telegram messaging app that did not go into details on the numbers involved.

Kyiv and Moscow agreed to a large exchange of POWs and the remains of thousands of dead soldiers during talks in Istanbul earlier this month.

Since then, Russia and Ukraine have swapped dozens of prisoners of war, focusing on under-25s and the severely wounded and sick. There are hopes they could build into some of the biggest exchanges in the war that was triggered by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

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Russia's defence ministry said a group of Russian troops had returned from Ukraine and crossed into neighbouring Belarus, in accordance with the agreements made on June 2.

"They are being provided with the necessary psychological and medical assistance," the ministry said on Telegram.

On Wednesday, Ukraine said it had brought home the bodies of 1,212 bodies of troops killed in the war with Russia. Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said Ukraine had returned the bodies of 27 Russian soldiers.