Russia: Zelenskyy blocking prisoner swap

Shafaq News — Moscow

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking to “physically destroy” his own people, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

In an interview with Sputnik radio, she said Kyiv had refused to accept 1,000 captured Ukrainian soldiers in a planned exchange with Moscow, accusing Zelenskyy of acting under “the flags of nationalism and national identity” to carry out a mission “written for him by someone” to harm Ukrainians.

Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, head of Moscow’s delegation in talks with Ukraine, likewise blamed Kyiv for stalling the swap, saying the refusal halted the second phase and blocked the start of the third.

Kyiv’s Coordination Headquarters has previously rejected such accounts, attributing delays to discrepancies in the prisoner lists submitted by Russia.

The exchange plan was unveiled in June during talks in Istanbul, where both sides indicated readiness for what would have been the largest swap since the war began — involving 1,000 prisoners each. The deal has since stalled amid mutual accusations of non-compliance, though US President Donald Trump is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, where the war in Ukraine is expected to feature prominently.