Ukraine updates: Hundreds of prisoners freed in major swap

"Our people are home," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X, formerly Twitter, after Russia and Ukraine conducted a major prisoner swap, 206 in all, their second such exchange in two days.

Zelenskyy posted pictures of the servicemen wrapped in the national blue-and-yellow flag, hugging, talking on cell phones and posing for group photos at an undisclosed location.

The exchange was brokered by the United Arab Emirates, according to Emirati state news agency WAM. It was the country's eighth such mediation since the start of 2024, it said.

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's ombudsman, said most of the freed Ukrainians had been in Russian captivity since the early days of the invasion. According to Lubinets, Kyiv had so far secured the return of 3,672 Ukrainians in 57 exchanges.

Ukraine made a new call on the West to allow it to strike deeper into Russia.

“Russian terror begins at weapons depots, airfields, and military bases inside the Russian Federation,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Andriy Yermak said Saturday.

“Permission to strike deep into Russia will speed up the solution," he added.

The renewed call came a day after US and British leaders met in Washington to discuss their policy on the use of long-range weapons. The meeting, however, produced no immediate viable shift in policy.

So far, the US has allowed Kyiv to use American-provided weapons only in a limited area inside Russia's border with Ukraine.

The renewed appeal came as Kyiv said Russia launched more drone and artillery attacks into Ukraine overnight, the Associated Press reported.

The Russian Defense Ministry has announced that its troops have captured another village in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. 

The village of Zhelanne Pershe is located in Pokrovsk district, a key logistical hub for the Ukrainian army. 

Russian forces have advanced rapidly in the eastern Donetsk region in recent weeks, putting pressure on a Ukrainian army that is short of both soldiers and weapons.

Russia and Ukraine conducted a major exchange of prisoners on Saturday — 206 in all.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the 103 Russian soldiers exchanged on Saturday had been captured in Russia's Kursk region in return for the same number of Ukrainians, and that an exchange deal had been brokered by the United Arab Emirates.

Later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the exchange, saying it involved "82 privates and sergeants. 21 officers. Defenders of the Kyiv and Donetsk regions, Mariupol and Azovstal, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv regions. Warriors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the National Guard of Ukraine, border guards, and police officers," he wrote on X.

Ukrainian forces seized large swathes of territory in the Kursk region last month in their first major incursion into Russia. On Friday, Zelenskyy said Russia had launched a counteroffensive in the region. 

NATO could have provided Ukraine with arms before the Russian invasion in 2022 to prevent the attack from happening, the outgoing head of the Western military alliance said in an interview released on Saturday.

"Now we provide military stuff to a war —  then we could have provided military stuff to prevent the war," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told the German weekly newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS).

Stoltenberg said NATO had been unwilling to give Kyiv the weapons it had requested at the time amid fears that tensions with Russia would escalate.

He also said that only negotiations would succeed in ending the war.

"To end this war there will have to be again dialogue with Russia at a certain stage. But it has to be based on Ukrainian strength," he said.

Stoltenberg will step down in October from his role at NATO after 10 years in the position. He will be replaced by former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. 

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed Russia has the capability to completely destroy the Ukrainian capital with non-nuclear means if Western long-range missiles are used to attack targets within its borders.

He said Moscow already had grounds to use nuclear bombs — under its own nuclear defense doctrine — in response to Ukraine's incursion into Kursk.

But instead, Russia could use new non-nuclear weapons to turn Kyiv into "a giant blot of molten-grey mass" if it lost patience, he said.

Speculating about the world's reaction to Russia's hypothetical attack, he used a profanity and predicted observers would say "it's impossible, but it happened," according to his post on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia's current defense doctrine states that Moscow could use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack by another country, but also to respond to a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has told Russian security chief Sergei Shoigu that his government "would further expand cooperation and collaboration" with Moscow based on a treaty signed in June, North Korean state media reported on Saturday.

Kim also told the visiting Shoigu that he wished "the respected President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin good health and success in his work." 

Shoigu is currently the head of Russia's Security Council after stepping down as defense minister in May.

His meeting with Kim was intended to "make an important contribution to the implementation" of the defense pact signed during Putin's visit to Pyonyang in June, the Council said on their website.

As ties between the two countries grow closer, Western powers have accused North Korea of selling ammunition to Russia in defiance of international sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. 

Pyongyang has dismissed the accusations as "absurd."

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he has held "long and productive" talks with US President Joe Biden on the conflict in Ukraine, with the two countries coming to a "strong position."

However, Starmer, who took office in July, declined to comment on whether the pair had taken any new decision on whether to loosen restrictions regarding Ukraine's potential use of Western long-range weaponry to attack targets within Russia itself.

"This wasn't a meeting about a particular capability. That wasn't why we got our heads down today," he said.

"It was to allow ourselves the space, which we took, the time, which we took, to have a strategic discussion so that tactical decisions could be seen within the wider strategy," he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said allowing long-range strikes "would mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are at war with Russia," which would necessitate Moscow taking "appropriate decisions."

Western allies have so far balked at allowing the weapons they have supplied to Kyiv to be employed within Russia, seemingly amid fears that Moscow could retaliate with its nuclear arsenal.

The US State Department says it has given the green light to the sale of dozens of F-35 fighter jets to Romania, a NATO ally.

The contract, worth $7.2 billion (€6.5 billion), still has to be approved by Congress.

"This proposed sale will support the foreign policy goals and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a NATO ally that is an important force for political and economic stability in Europe," a State Department statement said.

The announcement comes as Ukrainian pilots have begun training at a special center in Romania on F-16s, US-made fighter jets that Washington has already approved for Kyiv's use in defending itself against the Russian invasion.

Romania occupies a strategic position next to Ukraine and the Black Sea.

On Monday, Romanian authorities reported that fragments of a Russian drone had been found on Romanian territory following an overnight attack on Ukrainian Danube ports.

Such incidents raise fears that NATO could at some stage be forced to enter the Ukraine conflict on the basis of its mutual defense clause.