IL-76 crash: Exchange list POWs not returned – HUR

The military personnel listed for an exchange set for January 24, 2024, were not aboard the crashed IL-76, according to Andriy Yusov, a representative from the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (HUR) in an interview with Voice of America.

On January 31, Ukraine successfully liberated 207 of its citizens from Russian captivity: 180 enlisted personnel and sergeants, and 27 officers. Nearly half of them were defenders of Mariupol.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that this was the 50th exchange since the full-scale war began. In total, Ukraine has managed to retrieve 3,035 people from captivity.

UPDATED AT 19:55. Yusov said that this exchange completed the one scheduled for January 24, 2024. He emphasized that today all individuals were exchanged, except for "a list of 65 people which Russia had claimed as supposedly deceased."

The HUR's representative stated that all other prisoners of war from the January 24 list had returned.

Yusov had earlier said that Russia was unwilling to return the bodies of Ukrainian prisoners of war, who were allegedly on the IL-76.

Read also: Zelenskyy: This is the 50th exchange during the great war