Ukraine updates: 190 prisoners of war released in exchange

NATO said it had appointed a senior official to lead the alliance's work in Ukraine as part of a broader effort to intensify support for Kyiv as it fights Russia's invasion.

Patrick Turner, a British official who has held senior posts inside NATO, will serve as the alliance's senior representative in Ukraine, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.

"I am sure he will excel in this important role as NATO continues to step up its support to Ukraine," Stoltenberg said.

Turner's tasks will include coordinating political and practical support for Ukraine on the ground as Kyiv continues its fight against Russia's forces.

Two people were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in the Russian border region of Belgorod, local authorities said.

The casualties were a young couple traveling in a civilian vehicle outside the regional capital of the same name, Belgorod, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, announced.

Last week, Ukrainian strikes on the Belgorod region killed four people within a 24-hour period, while 20 more were injured, according to Russian authorities.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian territory throughout the conflict, which it says are justified responses to Moscow's aggression.

Some 42,000 soldiers and civilians are currently missing in Ukraine, an Interior Ministry official said.

The number of missing Ukrainians had been as high as 51,000, Dmytro Bohatiuk, from the ministry's missing persons department, told state news agency Ukrinform.

The number of missing has dropped after thousands of prisoners of war were accounted for, Bohatiuk said.

Another challenge is identifying the people who've died in conflict. Bohatiuk said the Defense Ministry does not take genetic samples from soldiers in advance of deployment.

A German court has sentenced a dual German-Russian citizen to six years and nine months in prison for selling electronics for military use to Russian companies in violation of sanctions.

The court in Stuttgart said the 59-year-old man delivered 120,000 parts to Russia from January 2020 through May 2023. The parts could be used for military purposes and included those used in the Orlan-10 drone deployed by Russia against Ukraine.

The illegally supplied components were reportedly worth about €875,000 ($957,450). 

After the war began in 2022, the defendant tried to disguise the sales to Russian companies with invoices and shipping documents for destinations including Hong Kong and Turkey, the court said.

The European Union banned such deals after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and sanctions have been tightened since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022.

Germany will cut its military aid to Ukraine by half next year, even with the possibility that Republican candidate Donald Trump could return to the White House and curb US support for Kyiv.

According to a draft of the 2025 budget seen by Reuters, German aid to Ukraine will be cut to €4 billion ($4.35 billion) in 2025 from about €8 billion in 2024.

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said Ukraine's financing was secured "for the foreseeable future" thanks to a Group of Seven initiative to use proceeds from frozen Russian assets to give the country $50 billion in loans.

Alarm bells rang across Europe this week after Trump chose as his vice presidential running mate Senator JD Vance, who opposes military aid to Ukraine and has warned that European countries will have to rely less on the United States for defense.

Russia and Ukraine have released a total of 190 captured soldiers in the latest prisoner exchange between the two sides, officials in Moscow and Kyiv have announced.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Russian Defense Ministry each said 95 of their soldiers had been freed after the United Arab Emirates acted as an intermediary.

Zelenskyy said that the freed Ukrainian prisoners were members of the Ukrainian armed forces, the national guard and the border guard service. In his post on X, formerly Twitter, Zelenskyy thanked the United Arab Emirates for its help in facilitating the swap.

Among the released Ukrainians were some who had spent more than two years in captivity. 

Around 3,400 people have returned from Russian captivity since the outbreak of the war, the country's Coordination Headquarters for POWs said. Ukrainian POWs suffer routine medical neglect, mistreatment and even torture, the UN said.

Meanwhile, Russia's Defence Ministry, in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, said the returning Russian soldiers would be flown to Moscow for medical examinations and physical and psychological rehabilitation.

The prisoner swap was the third of its kind in the past seven weeks. In the previous exchange, which took place in June and was also facilitated by the UAE, Russia and Ukraine each returned 90 prisoners. 

dh/rm (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)