How Russia is using prisoner exchanges

According to the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, as of May 1, 2025, there were about 8,000 military personnel and 2,000 civilians in Russian captivity, held in at least 300 locations. Since March 2022, 5,757 people have been released from Russian prisons (a thousand of them in the last month), and another 536 Ukrainians have been returned outside of official exchanges. During peace talks in Istanbul on June 2, the parties discussed the possibility of an "all-for-all" exchange.

The exchange of military personnel, civilians, and bodies of the dead is taking place in stages; the number of those exchanged is currently not disclosed for security reasons. The final numbers will be released after all stages of the exchange are completed. Despite the agreement, Russia has tried to independently dictate the format of the exchange process, frequently postponing meetings and exerting information pressure on Ukraine, said Kirill Budanov, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. The Kremlin has been using similar tactics since 2014. Here’s how, through regular attempts to disrupt the process, asymmetry of demands and legal obstacles, Russia wants to use prisoners to put pressure on Ukraine.

 

Exchanges 2014—2022

 

As early as July 2014, the Russians and their mercenaries illegally detained almost 400 journalists, civilians, political figures, and judicial workers. Prisoner exchanges took place, but chaotically. During the Ilovaisk Cauldron in August 2014, illegal armed formations (NORs) captured about three hundred Ukrainian soldiers (the exact number is still unknown, at least 18 people are still missing). And on August 24, in occupied Donetsk, a column of 50 prisoners of war was formed and, accompanied by armed militants, was forced to walk along the central street of the city. During the movement of the column, the prisoners of war were insulted, beaten, and mistreated. At the request of a Ukrainian human rights activist, a case was opened in the European Court of Human Rights regarding the "parade of prisoners" for violation of the Geneva Convention for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

After the signing of "Minsk-1" and pressure on Moscow from Western partners in September 2014, 1,200 Ukrainians were returned. The Russians often interrupted the exchanges, trying to use them to legitimize the occupation authorities in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, insisting on their recognition as a party to the negotiations.

On December 26, 2014, the first "large" exchange took place - 222 militants for 146 Ukrainian soldiers. In early 2015, the militants held another "parade of prisoners" under the leadership of the leader of pro-Russian terrorists in the occupied territories of Donetsk Oblast, Oleksandr Zakharchenko. Since the beginning of 2015, 600 Ukrainians have been illegally detained in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine. In February, Ukraine signed "Minsk-2", which was supposed to establish a regime of silence and regulate the withdrawal of heavy equipment from the line of contact. At the same time, fighting was going on for the Debaltseve bridgehead, as a result of which more than a hundred Ukrainian soldiers leaving Debaltseve were killed, and more than three dozen of them went missing. At the end of February, an exchange of 139 Ukrainian soldiers for 52 militants was carried out. Throughout 2015, smaller exchanges (up to 10 people per month) took place, which were not always publicly announced in the media.

In 2016, the head of the pro-Russian occupation administration in Luhansk Oblast, Igor Plotnitsky, stated that all soldiers would be returned to Ukraine by Christmas. However, the exchange was canceled a day later. The militants refused to hand over even seriously ill people and women. Kiev managed to get the first prisoners in 2016 only at the end of February - those who had been held hostage for more than a year. Similar behavior by the militants was repeated again and again: as soon as it seemed that the parties had reached an agreement on the format and conditions of the release, Russian mediators broke off the exchange.

The detention of Russian soldiers by the Ukrainian side was indicative. Since Russia at that time was trying to hide its military support for the militants and its own presence in eastern Ukraine, it was important for the Ukrainian side to reveal irrefutable evidence of Russian involvement. In May 2015, the Armed Forces of Ukraine detained in Togliatti career GRU officers Sergeant Alexandrov and Captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev from the 3rd Separate Special Forces Brigade, who were operating as part of a sabotage and reconnaissance group.

Immediately after they fell into the hands of the Ukrainian military, the media began discussing the possibility of their exchange for Ukrainian pilot Nadya Savchenko, who had been sentenced by the Russians to 22 years in prison. In May 2016, this exchange took place. After her release, Savchenko traveled to Minsk to negotiate with the militants about a prisoner exchange, although she did not have the appropriate mandate for this and was criticized by the current authorities.

Several exchanges took place during the summer of that year, including the return home of Crimean activist Gennady Afanasyev, accused of "terrorism", and engineer Yuri Soloshenko (captured at the age of 74). The other side ignored most of the Ukrainian side's proposals and in 2016 released only 16 Ukrainians.

In December 2016, veterans of the Ukrainian Dobrobats imposed a trade blockade of the occupied territories, which was later supported by then-President Poroshenko and the National Security and Defense Council. Initially, the blockade was claimed to be aimed at releasing all Ukrainian prisoners of war. However, this did not have the desired effect. Officially, only one exchange took place in 2017, and it was one of the largest of its kind in the entire period: Ukraine released 233 people and 73 prisoners, including prisoners of war and civilians, journalists and activists. Several unofficial exchanges of civilians took place during the year.

 

There were no successful attempts to return prisoners in 2018. In June 2019, a "unilateral act of humanity" took place - Medvedchuk personally brought four hostages from uncontrolled territories (after first personally demanding the release of the heads of the occupation administrations Pasichnik and Pushilin), while Ukraine did not hand over anyone.

 

In September 2019, the “35 for 35” exchange took place. 24 sailors who were captured by the Russians during the Kerch Strait incident in late 2018 returned to Ukraine. In addition to director Oleg Sentsov, activist Oleksandr Kolchenko, one of the leaders of UNA-UNSO Mykola Karpyuk and other civilians were returned. At the end of 2019, 12 more military personnel and 64 civilians were returned, while Ukraine returned 124 former “Berkut officers”. In April 2020, the so-called “Easter” exchange took place, when Ukraine managed to free 20 of its citizens. The hostages were released almost two years later.

 

Medvedchuk's role

 

In December 2014, Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin's godfather, received the official status of a negotiator from Ukraine on the exchange of prisoners with the occupation administrations in the territories occupied by Russia. It seemed to the then state leadership that Medvedchuk, thanks to his closeness to Putin, should cope well with the role of a kind of "lobbyist". From the position of Machiavellian supporters, for the sake of such a noble goal as the return of Ukrainians to their homeland, it was possible to resort to the "services" of this politician. In addition to returning to political processes, Medvedchuk was also granted a number of privileges - direct flights between Kiev and Moscow (despite the official ban on air traffic with Russia), control over former Rosneft gas stations, artificially created non-competitive conditions in the liquefied gas market, etc. According to the investigation by Bihus.info, despite the privileges that Medvedchuk received due to his new role, his effectiveness as a negotiator was questionable: before his official involvement in the process (from September to December 2014), Ukraine released 1,500 people, while in the following years, by April 2019, it released only a little more than 3,000. Moreover, according to the journalists, Medvedchuk not only did not facilitate, but probably even hindered other Ukrainian participants in the negotiations. The investigation by Bihus.info shows that Medvedchuk insisted that the militants conduct exchanges exclusively through him, advising them to disrupt the negotiations conducted by the official Ukrainian side.

If at that time there was still at least some semblance of the Minsk process, which propagandists regularly and unfoundedly accused the Ukrainians of violating, then the gradual involvement of Medvedchuk in the negotiation process, especially the decision on the fate of the prisoners, completely undermined the spirit of Minsk. “Minsk-2” is a set of measures that were to be implemented by authorized bodies, official representatives of the parties to the conflict, with the mediation of international structures. With the infiltration of Medvedchuk as a quasi-legal negotiator and the strengthening of his status as a “mediator”, it turned out that informal institutions began to prevail over formal ones in the exchange processes. And under these conditions, the “Medvedchuk-Putin” vertical actually replaced the legal procedures established by Minsk and — at least in the area of hostage exchange — became its alternative. In 2021, Medvedchuk was sanctioned by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, and the court also placed him under house arrest. The Trilateral Contact Group was confident that this would not affect the negotiation process in any way. However, the work of the Trilateral Contact Group came to a dead end, tensions on the front escalated, and Putin was withdrawing troops to the Ukrainian borders, so there was no talk of any exchanges.

 

Russian manipulation

 

The Russians and their proxies tried to drag Ukraine into a legal quagmire to disrupt the exchanges. The Kremlin did not consider Ukrainians who were tried in Russia on trumped-up charges to be prisoners, according to Dmitry Peskov, because they were “convicted in Russia under Russian law.” Instead, the Russians demanded “procedural cleansing”: that their citizens not be convicted by a Ukrainian court and that the Ukrainian president, in violation of the law, pardon them. Russian citizens detained in Ukraine often had a status that made it difficult to exchange them. For example, some of them were not considered prisoners, but rather suspects of crimes (such as terrorism or participation in illegal armed formations). Such demands complicated an already complex process, as Ukraine could not simply hand over these Russian citizens without trial.

In addition, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to capture Russian regular soldiers, the Russians denied their status in every possible way - they said that these people had nothing to do with the Russian army, that they were not carrying out any military missions on the territory of Ukraine or the occupied regions, etc. Thus, the Russian side gave up two regular GRU officers, who themselves admitted that they were aware of where and with what task they were sent, and gave up the captured contract soldier Viktor Ageyev. Russia called them "private individuals" or "volunteers", which complicated the negotiations, since Russia did not officially recognize its participation in the war in Ukraine, and therefore was in no hurry to take its citizens or exchange them.

 

In addition, Russia and the militants could demand the release of their citizens in exchange for a much larger number of Ukrainians, which created an inequality in the process. They also manipulated the exchange lists. The Russian side could include on the lists people who were not prisoners of war, but were simply imprisoned for serious crimes (murder, rape), or those whose whereabouts were unknown, which delayed the process and created additional obstacles.

 

Exchanges after the invasion

 

With the beginning of the invasion, Ukraine faced a new challenge: the mass arrest of not only military personnel, but also civilians - mayors, journalists, volunteers, priests, employees of local enterprises who had never taken up arms. If the exchange of prisoners of war is regulated by the Geneva Convention, then the return of civilians captured by Russia takes place outside the legal framework. According to the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets, civilians are returning "... within the framework of mutual return, but this is not an exchange as a legal process." This uncertainty has become another tool of Russian manipulation aimed at exerting pressure and demoralizing Ukrainians.

The first full exchange of prisoners of war took place on March 24, 2022. In the first six months of the war, the parties carried out about a dozen exchanges. The largest exchange was in September 2022, when Ukraine returned 215 defenders, including 103 fighters from Azovstal. Five commanders of the Mariupol garrison were sent to Turkey, and 10 foreign volunteers to Saudi Arabia. The price of this exchange turned out to be such that Ukraine handed over Viktor Medvedchuk and 55 Russian soldiers to Russia. Already in October, a “women’s exchange” took place, as part of which 108 Ukrainian women - soldiers and civilians - returned home.

A turning point came in January 2024, when 230 Ukrainians returned home as part of a Christmas exchange organized by the United Arab Emirates. According to the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense, 1,002 people were released in 2023. Two more exchanges took place in the winter of 2024, and 300 Ukrainians were exchanged, but Russia continued to slow down the process, using prisoners as a means of pressure. On 24 January 2024, an Il-76 military transport plane crashed in the Belgorod Oblast of Russia. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war were on board, who were being taken for an exchange. Ukraine neither admitted nor denied the shooting down of the plane and responded that it could not confirm that Ukrainian prisoners were on board. Later, US officials suggested that Ukrainian forces may have used a Patriot missile to shoot down the plane, thinking that the plane was carrying Russian missiles and ammunition. According to the Media Initiative for Human Rights, Russia may have intentionally sent the Il-76 military plane, which crashed in the Belgorod region on January 24, 2024, into the lawful zone of operation of the Ukrainian air defense system.

A new impetus for the exchanges was given by the Ukrainian operation in the Kursk region, which began in late summer 2024. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, the operation fulfilled two key tasks: creating a buffer zone on Russian territory and significantly replenishing the exchange fund. Over the course of three months, the Ukrainian armed forces captured more than 700 Russian soldiers, including conscripts and "Kadyrovtsy". This forced Russia to intensify negotiations. In August, on Ukraine's Independence Day, an exchange took place in which Ukrainian conscripts were returned, including those from Azovstal and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In September, Russia returned female civilians captured in the occupied south, as well as Azov soldiers and marines. The exchange in October 2024 was unique, when Ukraine managed to return the defenders of Mariupol, whom Russia had sentenced to life imprisonment on trumped-up charges. According to the Institute for the Study of War, the Kursk operation created a certain short-term effect, forcing Russia to participate in the exchanges.

 

In total, in 2024, Ukraine conducted 11 exchanges, freeing 1,358 citizens from Russian captivity. In 2025, the exchanges became regular, in some places taking place several times a month. At the end of May 2025, the largest exchange in the history of the Russian-Ukrainian war took place in the “1000 for 1000” format. In June, a multi-stage exchange began, within the framework of which priority was first given to the wounded and military personnel under the age of 25.

 

What has changed since 2022

 

Russia has systematically used exchanges for propaganda and manipulation. If in 2014–2022 it promoted the image of “humanitarian gestures” by the occupation administrations, then after the full-scale invasion the Kremlin switched to harsher methods. Prisoners are used not only as “trade goods”, but also for intimidation. “Parades of prisoners” have been replaced by shooting demonstrations, torture and mockery, which often end in the destruction of prisoners before an exchange is possible. Such actions are aimed at demoralizing Ukrainian society and increasing psychological pressure.

A characteristic feature of this phase of the war was the mass capture of Russian prisoners by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, especially those who voluntarily surrendered. The projects “I Want to Live”, “I Want to Find”, “I Want to Go to My Own” reached millions of Russians. At the same time, Russian propaganda continued to manipulate, accusing Ukraine of “inhumane” treatment of prisoners, allegedly without medical care or food, while Ukrainian prisoners, according to their claims, are treated “humanely”.

In prisoner exchanges with Ukraine, Russia sometimes returns not only prisoners of war, but also civilians, especially those who have served or have served sentences in Russian prisons for crimes not related to the war, as well as those scheduled for deportation. During the prisoner exchange in the “1000 for 1000” format, Russia returned a certain number of civilians to Ukraine, more than half of whom were convicted of crimes not related to the war. In particular, these are people who served sentences in prisons in the occupied territories of Mykolaiv and Kherson regions, from where they were taken to Russia after the occupation. For example, in November 2022, the Russians took 1,800 prisoners with them, but returned only 380, of which 15 were exchanged in May 2025. Some of them (three) were sent to a detention center after their return, because they did not serve the full sentence.

Another element of disinformation was fake news that Ukraine was allegedly refusing to accept the bodies of the dead to avoid paying reparations. In fact, Ukraine regularly repatriates the bodies of the dead. In 2025, 757 bodies were returned in January, 757 in February, 909 in April and another 909 in May. According to the estimates of the publication "Slovo i dilo", as of April 2025, Ukraine has returned around 8,000 bodies of fallen soldiers.

The topic of repatriation of the bodies of the dead is emotionally sensitive. Russia is using it to incite resentment and demoralize Ukrainians, portraying Ukraine as a country that "insults" its heroes.

 

Particularly cynical is Russia’s refusal to return more than 800 Azov fighters, who were ordered to lay down their arms after an 86-day defense of Mariupol and have been held captive for four years. In contrast, the release of its own citizens does not cause joy in Russia. For example, a video released by the Russian movement Our Vykhod shows the mother of a soldier saying that she would rather her son remain in captivity than return home. Despite Russia’s manipulation and cruelty, Ukraine is trying to return its prisoners. According to official reports, there are at least 8,000 military personnel, another 2,000 civilians, and there may still be people whose captivity Russia has never officially confirmed. Almost every exchange involves people who are officially considered missing. The exchanges remain not only a humanitarian mission, but also a symbol of invincibility, where every returned Ukrainian is a victory over Russia. The exchange of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia in the period from 2014 to 2022 was not so much the embodiment of the political and legal mechanism foreseen by the Minsk agreements, but rather the result of the coincidence of political will, personal interests and situational agreements between the parties.

Russia used the exchanges as a tool to achieve broader geopolitical goals, particularly to legitimize its occupation administrations in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts by imposing them as official parties to the negotiations. This allowed the Kremlin to promote a narrative of "internal conflict" in Ukraine, while avoiding responsibility for its own aggression. The inclusion of Viktor Medvedchuk in the negotiation process, despite his dubious effectiveness, testified to Russia's attempt to increase its influence on Ukrainian politics through loyal personalities, undermining the spirit and letter of the Minsk agreements. Ultimately, the "Medvedchuk-Putin" vertical effectively replaced formal institutions, which complicated the transparency and legitimacy of the process.

In order to influence society, Russia deliberately manipulated the issue of prisoners, keeping Ukrainians in a state of emotional tension and uncertainty. Interruptions to exchanges, artificial delays, "prisoner parades" and disinformation, such as accusations that Ukraine violated agreements, were intended to demoralize society and make Kiev more receptive to negotiations. Such actions have increased pressure on the Ukrainian authorities, forcing them to make compromises, such as pardoning Russian citizens or handing over individuals accused of serious crimes in exchange for the release of Ukrainians.