September 15 () –
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that Ukrainian troops are doing everything possible to hold their positions on the front and are putting pressure on Russia “so that the war is felt where it came from.”
“We are holding our ground, no matter how difficult it may be (…). As expected, we are defending our fundamental interest: bringing peace. We are putting pressure on Russia and doing everything possible to make the war felt there, from where it came to Ukraine,” the president said in his daily evening address, after receiving a report on the front line from the Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksander Sirski.
During his speech, Zelensky provided new details on the exchange of 103 of his fighters who remained in captivity of the other side in a new agreement brokered by the United Arab Emirates, as announced on Wednesday by the authorities of Moscow and Kiev.
The prisoners were members of the Armed Forces, the National Guard, the border guard, the police and other bodies of the Defense and Security Forces of Ukraine, and “had been in captivity since 2022, since the first months of the war,” the president noted. “Among them, there are boys in critical condition after being wounded. All of them will be provided with the necessary assistance,” he added.
The exchange took place “as a result of a negotiation process,” the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that the now-freed Russian soldiers had been captured during the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian province of Kursk, an operation that Kiev launched in early August.
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