Russia and Ukraine swap 270 prisoners each, five once presumed dead

The exchange

Russia and Ukraine each handed over 270 prisoners on Friday, 23 October 2026, in an exchange both countries announced. Zelensky said the people returned to Ukraine included members of the National Guard, border guards, the army and navy, as well as nine civilians, and that most of the military personnel had been held since 2022. Russia's defence ministry said it received 270 Russian soldiers, who are now in Belarus and will be taken to Russia once they receive psychological and medical care. According to TASS, citing the ministry, both sides also swapped the bodies of fallen soldiers.

Of the 270 people returned to Ukraine, Zelensky put 261 in the military and nine among civilians. Ukraine's coordination headquarters for prisoners said nine of the freed servicemen are seriously ill.

Five people once presumed dead

Five of the people returning to Ukraine had been listed as dead. Zelensky said they were among the survivors of the Olenivka strike in July 2022, which he described as a Russian terrorist attack on a prison camp in Donetsk region. Ukraine accuses Russia of a war crime over the attack, which it says killed dozens of prisoners. Russia says Ukrainian forces opened fire at the site. The exact circumstances of the incident have still not been established.

Civilians and Russian personnel

Russia's human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, said Ukraine handed over seven civilians to Russia, who can now rejoin their families. She said some had been unable to return to relatives for a long time because of document problems, while others were stranded far from home without support or money. Lantratova thanked her Ukrainian counterpart and the International Committee of the Red Cross for their role. The coordination headquarters' Khochu nayti project said it handed 270 soldiers to Russia from Ukrainian captivity, and that 150 of them had earlier been located by relatives through the service. More than 80% of them had been held in Ukraine for no more than two years, and 35 were mobilised, with the rest contract soldiers, according to the project. For the first time since 2025, Russia included combatants recruited in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions on its exchange lists, and Deutsche Welle reported that 21 officers and 70 sergeants were among those sent to Russia.

Talks and the wider context

The Kremlin said direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, mediated by the United States, are expected in November in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Those talks had been stalled since the start of this year. Exchanges like this one take place regularly and are among the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv, as well as the only tangible result of their negotiations. The Ukrainian coordination headquarters said the swap had been agreed some time earlier. The most recent large-scale exchange took place on 19 August, when 103 Ukrainians returned from Russian captivity, and ten more returned later that month.