Updated May 24, 2025 at 9:57 AM EDT
A CITY IN NORTHERN UKRAINE — This weekend Ukraine and Russia continue to carry out the exchange of 1,000 prisoners of war, the largest such swap since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The exchange started on Friday and ends on Sunday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media that 270 soldiers and 120 civilians were included in Friday's exchange. On Saturday, he said 307 an additional soldiers came home.
"Our goal is to bring back every Ukrainian in Russian captivity," he wrote on his Telegram channel.
The freed Ukrainians arrived by bus to a leafy courtyard where dozens of families were waiting, hoping to be reunited with their loved ones.
Among those waiting was Tetiana Rossina, who held a poster with a photo of her 24-year-old son, Oleksandr Rossin. He's been missing for three years.
"I visit every exchange to try to get information about him," she says. "I also hope, of course, that he will walk out of that bus."
Ukrainian authorities asked NPR not to disclose the location out of security concerns. An area with so many Ukrainian soldiers and civilians gathered in one place could be at risk of a strike.
This POW exchange was the only deal made in Istanbul last week during the two countries' first direct negotiations about a ceasefire since the early days of Russia's 2022 invasion.
When the first buses with the freed POWS arrived, the gathered crowd broke into applause and rushed to meet them.
One of the freed soldiers is Anton Kobylnik, who had spent three years in Russian captivity. He arrived with a shaved head and an emaciated body draped in a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag.
"I'm worried about those of us left behind," he told a crowd of families and journalists.
He said he could not wait to hug his mom.
"I am in Ukraine, thankfully," he said, "but I won't truly feel like I'm home until I'm sitting with my mom in her cottage."
Zelenskyy's office said earlier this month that more than 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers are estimated to have been captured by Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians are also in Russian captivity.
One of those civilians is Volodymyr Mykolayenko, the former mayor of the southern city of Kherson. His niece Hanna Korsun-Samchuk told NPR that Russian forces took him away after occupying the city for several months in 2022.
"I've been trying to raise the issue of civilian prisoners because there's no easy procedure for exchanging them," she said on Monday in an interview in Kherson.
She said her uncle did not arrive in the first two days of the exchange.
Neither did the father of 18-year-old Milena Moroz, who held up his photograph in the crowd. He disappeared in eastern Ukraine in February.
"I wish I had told him, I love you, Dad," she said, her voice quivering.
Meanwhile, Natalia Stepanenko got good news about her husband, Ivan Mosych. He was on his way home.
"He's been captivity for two years, and our daughters and I have waited for him every day to return," she said.
When Mosych arrived, he said he was surprised at how worried he was. Maybe, he said, they wouldn't be here. Maybe they had forgotten him.
"I just hadn't seen them for so long, I didn't know how they would perceive me," he said.
He relaxed when his wife and two young daughters rushed to him, encircling him in an embrace, wiping away their happy tears — and his, too.
NPR's Hanna Palamarenko contributed to this report from Kyiv and Kherson.
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