The Ukrainian military has been capturing up to 150 Russian soldiers per day amid its ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
This was announced by Oleksii Drozdenko, the head of military administration in northeastern Ukraine, on the 12th day of Kyiv’s surprise offensive inside the enemy territory.
According to Drozdenko, many of the captured soldiers are young conscripts tasked with guarding the southwestern Russian border.
Some of them also admitted that they did not want to fight the advancing Ukrainian troops.
The high number of Russian prisoners of war and the relatively low number of casualties on Kyiv’s side only prove that the cross-border offensive has been a major success so far, Drozdenko told The Guardian.
“On the first day of the operation, there were only 15 casualties. Sixty, seventy percent of them were very light, caused by bomb damage, shrapnel,” he said.
Replenishing ‘Exchange Fund’
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has referred to captured Russian soldiers as Kyiv’s “exchange fund,” which will be used for better prisoner swap negotiations with Moscow.
He said the successful operations in Kursk have been contributing to the rapid replenishment of this so-called exchange fund.
“I thank all the soldiers and commanders who are taking Russian soldiers prisoner and thus bringing the release of our soldiers and civilians held by Russia closer,” Zelensky stressed.
Last month, Ukraine and Russia exchanged 95 prisoners of war each, the 54th swap between the two countries since the invasion began in February 2022.
But the biggest swap happened in January when Kyiv said 230 Ukrainian soldiers had been freed from Russian captivity in exchange for 248 captured Russian troops.
“No matter how difficult it may be, we are looking for everyone who may be in captivity. We have to return everyone,” the president said.
