Kyiv, Moscow swap 307 additional prisoners, hours after air strike kills 13 Ukrainian civilians

Ukraine and Russia exchanged 307 prisoners Saturday in the second stage of a massive prisoner swap, a rare moment of cooperation between the warring nations — that came hours after air strikes killed more than a dozen Ukrainian civilians.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s defense ministry confirmed the exchange of soldiers on Saturday, just a day after each side released a total of 390 combatants and civilians.Kyiv and Moscow have agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners of war each, the outcome of failed ceasefire talks earlier this month in Istanbul, Turkey — the first time the two sides met for direct peace talks since Russia’s 2022 invasion.“Today is the second day of the 1,000-for-1,000 exchange that we managed to negotiate in Türkiye,” Zelensky posted on X Saturday.

“In just these two days, 697 people have been brought home.We expect the process to continue tomorrow.” Members of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, the State Border Guard Service and the National Guard of Ukraine arrived in buses at a rendezvous point inside the war-torn country, where they hugged each other and draped themselves in Ukrainian flags.Earlier, an overnight aerial attack on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv injured 15 people, including two children, in one of the heaviest Russian attacks against the city since the war broke out.Explosions and machine gun fire was heard across the city, forcing residents to run for shelter in underground subway stations.“It’s terrorism,” Mykyta Kruchan, 22, whose parents live in an apartment building in the district that was hit by Russian drones and ballistic missiles, told the Kyiv Independent.

“We shoot their military buildings, military stuff, centers.… All they do is on purpose.”A dramatic orange-red glow from the explosions lit up the Kyiv sky, with plumes of smoke blowing across the horizon.Katarina Mathernová, the European Union’s ambassador to Kyiv, described the attacks as “horrific.”Outside the capital, at ...