23JUL

160 prisoners freed on each side

1 min read

20:33UTC

Russia and Ukraine each freed 160 soldiers on 26 June in an Emirati-brokered exchange; the freed Russians had been held in Belarus.

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ConflictDeveloping

Key takeaway

The humanitarian swap track keeps working while ceasefire talks stall, and the freed Russians came from Belarus.

Russia and Ukraine each freed 160 soldiers on 26 June in an exchange brokered by the United Arab Emirates, the Gulf state that has mediated several swaps in the war ¹. The freed soldiers had been held since 2022, and the released Russians had been held on Belarusian soil ².

The exchange continues a track that has kept moving even as ceasefire talks stalled. Istanbul Round 2 on 2 June agreed a 1,200-for-1,200 swap , and Ukraine completed the war's largest single exchange, a 1,000-prisoner deal, on 24 May . The Emirati channel has been the constant facilitator across the conflict, producing agreed lists faster than the Russia-Ukraine bilateral track alone. That the released Russians were held in Belarus threads this swap back into the week's Belarus story.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Russia and Ukraine swapped prisoners of war again, 160 soldiers each, on 26 June. The exchange was arranged with help from the United Arab Emirates, which has repeatedly stepped in to broker these swaps throughout the war. The freed Russian soldiers had been held in Belarus rather than Ukraine, a detail that shows how tangled up Belarus has become in the war despite formally staying out of the fighting.

What could happen next?

Meaning
That freed Russian soldiers were held in Belarus, not Ukraine, underlines how deeply Minsk's territory and personnel are entangled in the war despite formal non-belligerence.

Sources:RFE/RL·Russia Matters (Harvard Belfer Center)·Russia Matters (Harvard Belfer Center)

Mentions:Russia →Ukraine →Belarus →United Arab Emirates (UAE) →Istanbul →

First Reported In

Update #22 · Belarus relays go dark on Kyiv's deadline

RFE/RL· 2 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Istanbul Round 2: prisoners, no truce

The 160-for-160 swap continues the exchange track opened by the Istanbul Round 2 prisoner deal.

Occurred 2 Jun 2026

Read story →

War's biggest prisoner swap is completed

The exchange extends the pattern of large prisoner swaps following the 24 May 1,000-prisoner exchange.

Occurred 24 May 2026

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This Event

160 prisoners freed on each side

The swap keeps the one working humanitarian channel open, and the Belarus detention detail ties it back to the week's central story.

Different Perspectives

IAEA (Rafael Grossi)

IAEA inspectors logged Zaporizhzhia's 22nd loss of off-site power, ten of them in the last three months, after a thunderstorm knocked out the plant's sole surviving backup line. Grossi reads the accelerating frequency, not any single outage, as the safety signal now that the plant's redundancy is exhausted.

United States (Treasury/OFAC)

Washington has let general licence 134C, its Russian crude waiver, lapse for 36 days with no successor, the longest gap of the war. Treasury has not said whether the non-renewal reflects deliberate policy or administrative delay, leaving buyers to price in compliance risk rather than wait for clarity.

Slovakia

Slovakia dropped its hold-out on the EU's 21st sanctions package only after winning a 2028 guarantee phasing out Russian gas, the exact pipeline dependency, roughly 80% of its crude supply, that gave it leverage. Bratislava's climbdown clears the package but leaves the same single-veto mechanism intact for the next round.

Russia (Kremlin and general staff)

General staff chief Gerasimov claimed Donetsk captures on 18 July that ISW says it cannot corroborate, extending a pattern ISW clocked at a 5:1 exaggeration ratio earlier this year. Moscow is conditioning its public for a possible autumn mobilisation after September's Duma elections rather than acknowledging the front has stalled.

Ukraine (Zelenskyy government)

Zelenskyy dismissed his commander-in-chief, defence minister and chief of general staff within eight days, replacing Syrskyi with Drapatyi and Hnatov with Skybiuk as protesters demanded Syrskyi go and Fedorov return. Kyiv frames the sweep as a bet on manoeuvre capacity ahead of a feared Russian autumn surge, not the disarray critics read into three changes in a week.

The United Kingdom

Starmer pledged £300 million in Kyiv on 16 July toward Ukraine's Gripen E squadron, adding to the PURL expansion Trump and Rutte had announced two days earlier. London is paying into a scheme built around a shortfall NATO's own published $4bn-plus pledge does not close against Zelenskyy's roughly $15bn stated need.