Russian diplomat says Ukraine took back only 279 prisoners of war, although 935 were offered

MOSCOW, November 2. /TASS/. The Russian Defense Ministry offered to extradite 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war this year, but Kiev took only 279, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.

“This year, the Russian Ministry of Defense presented to the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War a proposal to return 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war to the Ukrainian side as part of exchanges,” the diplomat said at an online press conference. “How many of this number of people do you think the Kiev regime has taken back? I will emphasize that they are its own citizens. Only 279.”

“These are practically 700 people who could have returned to their families in Ukraine,” Zakharova continued. “They were simply shrugged off by the Kiev regime, and yet its representatives continue to travel to Canada and the rest of the world, allegedly appealing to and negotiating with the international community for mediation efforts and, as (former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Affairs Dmitry) Kuleba said , for the protection of Ukrainian citizens in Russia.”

The spokeswoman called such actions by the regime in Kiev ‘political tourism on the blood of its own citizens, its own soldiers’.

“Not those who have been experiencing hatred for years, not the criminals who are ready to kill anyone with weapons in their hands – both Russian citizens and residents of the African continent, as it now turns out, but those whom they literally mobilized by force. They tell them that Ukraine needs to be saved and send them to these human wave attacks. They are not interested in their fate,” Zakharova said.