Russia-Ukraine agree 'biggest' prisoner release after talks: Kushner
Russia and Ukraine have agreed their biggest ever release of prisoners after two days of U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi, US envoy Jared Kushner told reporters on Wednesday.
"One of the positives is we agreed that we're going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners, which we're going to finalise the numbers tomorrow," he said.
Kushner and fellow US mediator Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow on Thursday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then to Dublin to debrief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The two sides have exchanged thousands of captured soldiers throughout the almost five-year war, started by Russia's 2022 invasion.
But diplomatic talks have so far failed to move the two sides closer to an agreement to halt the fighting, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The two days of conversations in Abu Dhabi appeared to fit that mould, with the prisoner exchange and agreement to carry on talking the only concrete outcomes mentioned by any side in post-talks press statements.
Russian envoy Vladimir Medinsky and Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov also said a large scale prisoner exchange had been agreed, adding the numbers would be announced later.
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://cdn.naharnet.com/stories/en/323700 |