Russia and Ukraine exchanged captive civilians

The fact of the exchange was also confirmed in Ukraine.

“Ukrainians aged 35 to 66 have returned to their homeland. All of them were illegally arrested by the Russian side in 2022, during the occupation of Mariupol, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Luhansk regions. As for the Kyiv region, we are talking about Bucha region in particular, where the occupiers committed brutal crimes in 2022,” wrote Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Dmitry Lubinets.

According to a report published last week by Ukrainian human rights organizations and independent Norwegian experts, since the beginning of the full-scale war, the Russian authorities have illegally held more than 8,000 civilians in occupied Ukrainian territories and in Russia.

The authors of the report believe that it is a systematic policy of arrests and kidnappings, the purpose of which is to suppress any dissent.

Officials, teachers, doctors, businessmen, social activists and clergymen are among those arrested.

According to human rights defenders, most of them are subjected to torture during detention.