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The two sides succeeded in exchanging more than 260 prisoners of war, even as the war in Ukraine intensified due to Ukraine's fierce counterattack and Russia's mobilization of reserve forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said early in the morning that 215 Ukrainians and foreigners had been released in exchange for prisoners of war.
A source close to the office of the President of Ukraine told RBC that "Ukraine returned 215 prisoners of war and handed over 50 to Russia."
Among the released Ukrainian soldiers, the source explained that 108 regiments, including two commanders of the far-right nationalist military organization Azou Regiment, were included.
The Azou Regiment is a military organization rooted in the far-right nationalist militia that resisted pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Hundreds of people surrendered to the Russian army at the end of May after resisting until the end after the start of the Ukrainian War at the end of February with the ironworks in the southern port city of Mariupol as a base.
Meanwhile, Russian prisoners of war released include Viktor Medvedchuk, a former pro-Russian opposition leader in Ukraine who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin is known as the godfather of Medvedchuk's daughter.
Medvedchuk, who was under house arrest on charges of treason against the state that helped Russia, fled after the outbreak of the Ukraine war, but was arrested by Ukrainian authorities in April and awaiting trial.
In addition, it is reported that 10 foreign volunteers caught fighting on the Ukrainian side were also released from this prisoner exchange, including five British, two Americans, and one each Moroccan, Swedish, and Croatian.
Britons Sean Finner and Aiden Aslin, who were arrested in Mariupol in southern Ukraine in April and sentenced to death on charges of mercenaries by the pro-Russian court of the Donetsk People's Republic, were also released.