Oct 18 (Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine each swapped 95 prisoners of war on Friday in an agreement completed with the help of the United Arab Emirates acting as mediator, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

The ministry, in a post on the Telegram messaging app, said the returning Russian service members were undergoing medical checks in Belarus, one of Russia’s closest allies in the more than 2-1/2-year-old war.

There was no immediate word of the exchange from Ukrainian authorities.
A private Russian group which says it looks after the interests of prisoners of war published a list of returnees and said most of those being brought home were captured in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces staged an incursion in August.

Those forces remain in Kursk, though Russia’s military says its forces have clawed back some of the captured territory.

Ukrainian officials gave no immediate confirmation of the swap.
The last swap — involving 103 prisoners from both sides — took place in September.

The Ukrainian state body looking after the interests of prisoners of war said that was the 57th exchange conducted since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion.

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Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar; editing by Jonathan Oatis