Some of those released have been in prison since 2017.
Kyiv:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that 10 civilians, including a politician and two priests, taken prisoner in Russia and Belarus, had been released in a Vatican-brokered deal.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged hundreds of prisoners over the course of the two-year conflict, typically in one-for-one exchanges, but the release of civilian prisoners is rarer.
“We managed to return 10 more people from Russian captivity,” Zelensky said in a Telegram post. It was not immediately clear whether the release was part of a swap deal involving Russian prisoners held in Ukraine.
Some of those released have been in prison since 2017, he said, imprisoned in Russian-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine that were at the time ruled by Moscow-backed separatists.
Since then, Russia has annexed four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia – alongside the Crimean peninsula, which it conquered in 2014.
The list of those released included Nariman Dzhelal, a prominent Crimean Tatar politician, and two priests from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Five of them were originally arrested in Russia’s close ally Belarus, including on charges of helping Kiev’s army by providing information about Russian military movements.
Russia invaded Ukraine through Belarus at the start of the war and although Minsk did not join the Russian offensive, the two countries’ armed forces are closely linked.
“They were all released and are now back in Ukraine,” Zelensky said.
“I would also like to highlight the Vatican’s efforts to bring these people home,” he added, without giving further details.
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