Russia and Ukraine have conducted a major exchange of prisoners, 206 in all, in their second such swap in two days following negotiations mediated by the United Arab Emirates, officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that all 103 Ukrainians returned were from the military - 82 soldiers and privates and 21 officers.

The Russian Defence Ministry said the 103 Russian soldiers exchanged had been taken prisoner in the bordering Kursk region where Ukrainian forces launched a surprise incursion in August.

Ukrainian prisoners of war posing for a photo following a swap at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. Photo / AFP / Ukrainian Presidential Press Service

“Our people are home,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.

“We have successfully brought back another 103 warriors from Russian captivity to Ukraine.” Zelenskyy posted pictures of servicemen wrapped in the national blue and yellow flag, hugging each other, talking on mobile phones and posing for group photographs at an undisclosed location.

The exchange was mediated by the UAE, Emirati state news agency WAM said. It was the country’s eighth such mediation since the start of 2024, it said.

Kyiv and Moscow have frequently exchanged prisoners since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and Saturday’s swap was the third since Ukraine began a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in early August.

Ukrainian officials have previously said its troops had captured at least 600 Russian soldiers during the incursion, and this would help it secure the return of captured Ukrainians.

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s ombudsman, said the majority of the freed Ukrainians had been in Russian captivity since the early days of the invasion.

He posted a short video on the Telegram messaging app showing the servicemen standing in front of a bus and shouting, “Glory to Ukraine”.

Lubinets said Kyiv had so far secured the return of 3672 Ukrainians in 57 exchanges.

Seven dead after Russian shelling in Ukraine

Separately, Russian shelling killed at least seven people in four attacks on the south, southeast and east of Ukraine on Saturday, regional Ukrainian governors said.

In the Zaporizhzhia region in southeast Ukraine, governor Ivan Fedorov said Russian shells struck an agricultural enterprise in the town of Huliaipole, killing three people.

“All the dead are employees of the enterprise,” Fedorov said in a post on Telegram. Reuters could not verify details of these latest attacks in the war in Ukraine.

A missile attack in the suburbs of the Black Sea port city of Odesa killed a man and a woman and injured a 65-year-old woman, Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper said in a post on Telegram.

“A married couple died,” he said, adding they were found during checks of residential and commercial buildings damaged earlier in the day and Russian forces had used a prohibited cluster warhead.

Shelling killed a sixth person in the southern region of Kherson, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.

“A 60-year-old man who suffered serious injuries this afternoon died in hospital,” Prokudin wrote on Telegram.

In the Kharkiv region, Russia struck the village of Pisky-Radkivski with the high-speed Tornado-S multiple rocket launch system, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram.

The body of a 72-year-old woman was retrieved from the rubble, and two civilians, a man and a woman, were taken to hospital, he added.