Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy condemns ‘energy terror’ at UN meeting after 10 die in latest mass strikes | Ukraine

A snap from Reuters suggests that Russia and Ukraine will each exchange 50 prisoners of war today, according to the Russian-installed leader in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, who posted on the Telegram messaging service.

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More details to follow.

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The time in Kyiv is 1pm. Here is a round-up of the day’s headlines so far:

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  • Ukraine expects three nuclear power plants that were switched off because of Russian missile strikes on Wednesday will be operating again by Thursday evening, energy minister German Galushchenko said. “We expect that by evening the nuclear power plants will start working, providing energy to the network, and this will significantly reduce the [energy] deficit,” he said in comments broadcast on national television.

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  • More than two-thirds of the Ukrainian capital was still without power on Thursday morning and a number of residents had no running water, a day after Russian missile strikes caused Kyiv’s biggest outages in nine months of war. The capital was one of the main targets of the latest wave of attacks on energy facilities that cut power in many regions and made emergency blackouts necessary in others to conserve energy and enable repairs as winter sets in.

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  • Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the possibility of a prisoner-of-war swap, according to a Reuters report. Any swap would be linked to a resumption of Russian ammonia exports, which go to Asia and Africa, via a Ukrainian pipeline, three sources with knowledge of the meeting told the news agency.

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  • Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said contacts with the UN nuclear watchdog over safety at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine were “constructive” and showed some promise. The Zaporizhzhia plant, which Russia seized shortly after its invasion, was again rocked by shelling last weekend, prompting renewed calls from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to create a protection zone around it to prevent a nuclear disaster.

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  • Russia is not planning contact with the United States and did not initiate contact with Washington at the G20 summit in Indonesia, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said on Thursday. He added that contacts with Washington happen over the phone but take place through diplomatic channels and not at a presidential level.

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  • Ground battles continue to rage in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is pressing an offensive along a stretch of frontline west of the city of Donetsk, which has been held by its proxies since 2014, Reuters reports. Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces tried again to make advances on their main targets in the Donetsk region – Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Russian forces shelled both areas and used incendiary devices to set Ukrainian positions ablaze with only limited success, the general staff said.

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  • Russia’s federal security service (FSB) claimed it has prevented Ukrainian special services from carrying out what it said was sabotage on the “South Stream” gas pipeline, Russian news agencies reported. The pipeline was a project intended to transport Russian gas through the Black Sea to Bulgaria, although was later cancelled in favour of TurkStream.

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  • Polish leaders say that an air defence system which Germany offered Poland would be best given to Ukraine to help it protect itself against Russian strikes. Germany said earlier this week that it has offered Warsaw Eurofighter planes and Patriot defence systems to help defend Poland’s airspace after two men were killed when an apparently stray Ukrainian defence projectile fell in Poland near the border with Ukraine, the Associated Press reported.

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  • Hungary will provide €187m ($195m) in financial aid to Ukraine as its contribution to a planned EU support package worth up to €18bn in 2023, according to a government decree. Prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government has said it was willing to pay its share of support for Ukraine but would rather pay it bilaterally than through the EU’s joint borrowing, Reuters reported.

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  • Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the United Nations security council to act against Russia over air strikes on civilian infrastructure that have again plunged Ukrainian cities into darkness and cold as winter sets in. Russia unleashed a missile barrage across Ukraine on Wednesday, killing 10 people, forcing shutdowns of nuclear power plants and cutting water and electricity supply in many places.

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  • Neighbouring Moldova said it was suffering massive blackouts caused by the missile barrage and its EU-friendly president, Maia Sandu, accused Russia of leaving her country “in the dark”.

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  • European Union governments failed to reach a deal on Wednesday on the level at which to cap prices for Russian sea-borne oil under the G7 scheme and will resume talks, EU diplomats said. Earlier on Thursday, EU representatives met in Brussels. The move is part of sanctions intended to slash Moscow’s revenue from its oil exports so it has less money to finance the invasion of Ukraine.

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  • The resignation of Russia’s ambassador to Unesco will end the deadlock in a key group he chaired that is charged with preserving cultural sites around the world, a diplomatic source told AFP. The World Heritage Committee, responsible for adding properties to Unesco’s list of world heritage sites, had been unable to function for months after the international backlash against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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  • Ukraine’s military said Russian forces had fired about 70 cruise missiles at targets across the country and also deployed attack drones. The strikes killed 10 people and disconnected three nuclear power stations from the grid, officials said.

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That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for now. My colleague Rachel Hall will be along shortly to continue bringing you all the latest news from Russia’s war on Ukraine.

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The European Union is pressing ahead with a ninth sanctions package on Russia in response to Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, said during a visit to Finland.

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“We are working hard to hit Russia where it hurts to blunt even further its capacity to wage war on Ukraine and I can announce today that we are working full speed on a 9th sanctions package,” von der Leyen told a news conference.

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“And I’m confident that we will very soon approve a global price cap on Russian oil with the G7 and other major partners. We will not rest until Ukraine has prevailed over Putin and his unlawful and barbaric war,” she said.

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Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the possibility of a prisoner-of-war swap, according to a Reuters report.

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Any swap would be linked to a resumption of Russian ammonia exports, which go to Asia and Africa, via a Ukrainian pipeline, three sources with knowledge of the meeting told the news agency.

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Reuters reported:

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The sources said the talks were being mediated by the Gulf Arab state and did not include the United Nations despite the UN’s central role in negotiating the ongoing initiative to export agricultural products from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Ammonia is used to make fertiliser.

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However, the talks aim to remove remaining obstacles in the initiative extended last week and ease global food shortages by unblocking Ukrainian and Russian exports, they added. The sources asked not to be named in order to freely discuss sensitive matters.

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The Russian and Ukrainian representatives travelled to the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on 17 November where they discussed allowing Russia to resume ammonia exports in exchange for a prisoner swap that would release a large number of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners, the sources said.

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Reuters could not immediately establish what progress was made at the talks.

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The resignation of Russia’s ambassador to Unesco will end the deadlock in a key group he chaired that is charged with preserving cultural sites around the world, a diplomatic source told AFP.

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The World Heritage Committee, responsible for adding properties to Unesco’s list of world heritage sites, had been unable to function for months after the international backlash against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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“I have the honor to inform you of the end of my mission as permanent delegate of the Russian Federation to Unesco,” Russian ambassador Alexander Kuznetsov said on Tuesday in a letter to the members of the World Heritage Committee obtained by AFP.

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The resignation will allow the committee to “quickly appoint a new president” and resume its activities, a UN diplomat told AFP. Russia’s position as chair of the committee had sparked an outcry among other members following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

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The committee had been due to meet in June in the Russian city of Kazan, but 46 countries, including France and the UK, boycotted the event. The meeting was supposed to update the landscapes, monuments and cities included in the body’s list of heritage sites.

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Unesco regulations dictate that replacements for a resigning committee chair are to be appointed by the country that follows in alphabetical order in English.

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Hello, my name is Helen Sullivan and you’re reading the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.

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On Wednesday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the United Nations Security Council to act against Russia over air strikes on civilian infrastructure that again plunged Ukrainian cities into darkness and cold as winter sets in.

Russia unleashed a missile barrage across Ukraine on Wednesday, killing 10 people, forcing shutdowns of nuclear power plants and cutting water and electricity supply in many places.

“Today is just one day, but we have received 70 missiles. That’s the Russian formula of terror. This is all against our energy infrastructure… Hospitals, schools, transport, residential districts all suffered,” Zelenskiy said via video link to the council chamber.

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At least 10 people were killed in the strikes, Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said, including a two-day-old infant.

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  • Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the United Nations security council to act against Russia over air strikes on civilian infrastructure that have again plunged Ukrainian cities into darkness and cold as winter sets in. Russia unleashed a missile barrage across Ukraine on Wednesday, killing 10 people, forcing shutdowns of nuclear power plants and cutting water and electricity supply in many places.

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  • Neighbouring Moldova said it was suffering massive blackouts caused by the missile barrage and its EU-friendly president, Maia Sandu, accused Russia of leaving her country “in the dark”.

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  • European Union governments failed to reach a deal on Wednesday on the level at which to cap prices for Russian sea-borne oil under the G7 scheme and will resume talks, EU diplomats said. Earlier on Thursday, EU representatives met in Brussels. The move is part of sanctions intended to slash Moscow’s revenue from its oil exports so it has less money to finance the invasion of Ukraine.

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  • UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the UN security council on Wednesday that an exchange of 35 Russian and 36 Ukrainian prisoners was a positive development amid the “dark news” of Russian strikes on Ukraine. DiCarlo encouraged the parties to continue prisoner releases and follow international humanitarian law in relation to prisoners of war, Reuters reports.

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  • A Russian court on Wednesday extended by six months the detention of opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who risks being jailed for 10 years for denouncing president Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine. The 39-year-old Moscow city councillor is in the dock as part of an unprecedented crackdown on dissent in Russia, with most opposition activists either in jail or in exile. He faces up to 10 years behind bars, if convicted.

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  • The Kremlin said on Wednesday it had faith in the “success” of its offensive in Ukraine. “The future and the success of the special operation are beyond doubt,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on a visit to Armenia, using the official Moscow term to describe Russia’s assault, Agence France-Presse reports.

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  • European cities were urged to send spare generators to Ukraine to help the country through the winter in the face of Russia’s attacks on electricity infrastructure. Ukraine’s power grid came under bombardment again as the European parliament president, Roberta Metsola, launched an appeal to get generators to Ukraine.

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Key events

Russia risked causing a “nuclear and radioactive catastrophe” by launching attacks in which all Ukraine’s nuclear power plants were disconnected from the power grid for the first time in 40 years, Ukraine’s nuclear energy chief has said.

Reuters reports that Petro Kotin, head of nuclear power company Energoatom, said the vast nuclear power station in the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine, which has been out of commission since September, had also been disconnected from the grid on Wednesday and became reliant on backup diesel generators.

He added that the Zaporizhzhia plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since soon after Russia invaded Ukraine nine months ago, had been reconnected to the grid by Thursday morning and that the backup generators were turned off.

He said in a written statement:

There is a real danger of a nuclear and radiation catastrophe being caused by firing on the entire territory of Ukraine with Russian cruise and ballistic missiles, and a huge risk of damage to nuclear plants.

Russia must answer for this shameful crime.

Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that three nuclear power plants on territory held by Ukrainian forces had been switched off after the latest wave of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities.

Each side has blamed the other for shelling of the Zaporizhzhia plant complex.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has provoked ire in Ukraine by suggesting that the end of the war is Ukraine’s responsibility, and that if it does not “stop”, it will end in the “complete destruction” of the country.

In a broadcast clip circulating on social media for its controversial comments, Lukashenko said that “everything is in Ukraine’s hands now if they don’t want a huge number of people to die”.

He said that similar to relations with Germany following the second world war, once the Ukraine war has concluded “we will make it all up”.

Advisor to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, Anton Gerashchenko, tweeted that this was “theatre of [the] absurd”.

Lukashenko urged Ukraine to "stop" and said it would otherwise be "destroyed completely.

Theater of absurd. pic.twitter.com/2FcN8uVtSd

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) November 24, 2022

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Hungary has obtained an exemption from the EU’s proposed Russian oil price cap during talks in Brussels, according to the country’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó.

Szijjarto said at a briefing in Brussels broadcast on his Facebook page that the European Union’s current proposal says that oil deliveries though pipelines would be exempt from the price cap, which means it would not affect Hungary if the proposed cap is adopted later.

Russia and Ukraine said to be planning PoW exchange today

A snap from Reuters suggests that Russia and Ukraine will each exchange 50 prisoners of war today, according to the Russian-installed leader in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, who posted on the Telegram messaging service.

More details to follow.

Russia does not plan to supply oil to countries supporting a price cap on Russian oil, the Kremlin has said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said that Ukraine’s leadership could “end suffering” in Ukraine by meeting Russia’s demands to resolve the conflict.

Peskov was asked whether Russia was worried about the effect on the civilian population of its strikes on energy infrastructure, which have caused repeated mass blackouts.

Peskov said Russia attacked targets of military, not “social”, relevance.

Rachel Hall here taking over the blog for the next few hours. If there’s anything we’ve missed, do drop me a line at [email protected].

Summary

The time in Kyiv is 1pm. Here is a round-up of the day’s headlines so far:

  • Ukraine expects three nuclear power plants that were switched off because of Russian missile strikes on Wednesday will be operating again by Thursday evening, energy minister German Galushchenko said. “We expect that by evening the nuclear power plants will start working, providing energy to the network, and this will significantly reduce the [energy] deficit,” he said in comments broadcast on national television.

  • More than two-thirds of the Ukrainian capital was still without power on Thursday morning and a number of residents had no running water, a day after Russian missile strikes caused Kyiv’s biggest outages in nine months of war. The capital was one of the main targets of the latest wave of attacks on energy facilities that cut power in many regions and made emergency blackouts necessary in others to conserve energy and enable repairs as winter sets in.

  • Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the possibility of a prisoner-of-war swap, according to a Reuters report. Any swap would be linked to a resumption of Russian ammonia exports, which go to Asia and Africa, via a Ukrainian pipeline, three sources with knowledge of the meeting told the news agency.

  • Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said contacts with the UN nuclear watchdog over safety at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine were “constructive” and showed some promise. The Zaporizhzhia plant, which Russia seized shortly after its invasion, was again rocked by shelling last weekend, prompting renewed calls from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to create a protection zone around it to prevent a nuclear disaster.

  • Russia is not planning contact with the United States and did not initiate contact with Washington at the G20 summit in Indonesia, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said on Thursday. He added that contacts with Washington happen over the phone but take place through diplomatic channels and not at a presidential level.

  • Ground battles continue to rage in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is pressing an offensive along a stretch of frontline west of the city of Donetsk, which has been held by its proxies since 2014, Reuters reports. Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces tried again to make advances on their main targets in the Donetsk region – Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Russian forces shelled both areas and used incendiary devices to set Ukrainian positions ablaze with only limited success, the general staff said.

  • Russia’s federal security service (FSB) claimed it has prevented Ukrainian special services from carrying out what it said was sabotage on the “South Stream” gas pipeline, Russian news agencies reported. The pipeline was a project intended to transport Russian gas through the Black Sea to Bulgaria, although was later cancelled in favour of TurkStream.

  • Polish leaders say that an air defence system which Germany offered Poland would be best given to Ukraine to help it protect itself against Russian strikes. Germany said earlier this week that it has offered Warsaw Eurofighter planes and Patriot defence systems to help defend Poland’s airspace after two men were killed when an apparently stray Ukrainian defence projectile fell in Poland near the border with Ukraine, the Associated Press reported.

  • Hungary will provide €187m ($195m) in financial aid to Ukraine as its contribution to a planned EU support package worth up to €18bn in 2023, according to a government decree. Prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government has said it was willing to pay its share of support for Ukraine but would rather pay it bilaterally than through the EU’s joint borrowing, Reuters reported.

  • Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the United Nations security council to act against Russia over air strikes on civilian infrastructure that have again plunged Ukrainian cities into darkness and cold as winter sets in. Russia unleashed a missile barrage across Ukraine on Wednesday, killing 10 people, forcing shutdowns of nuclear power plants and cutting water and electricity supply in many places.

  • Neighbouring Moldova said it was suffering massive blackouts caused by the missile barrage and its EU-friendly president, Maia Sandu, accused Russia of leaving her country “in the dark”.

  • European Union governments failed to reach a deal on Wednesday on the level at which to cap prices for Russian sea-borne oil under the G7 scheme and will resume talks, EU diplomats said. Earlier on Thursday, EU representatives met in Brussels. The move is part of sanctions intended to slash Moscow’s revenue from its oil exports so it has less money to finance the invasion of Ukraine.

  • The resignation of Russia’s ambassador to Unesco will end the deadlock in a key group he chaired that is charged with preserving cultural sites around the world, a diplomatic source told AFP. The World Heritage Committee, responsible for adding properties to Unesco’s list of world heritage sites, had been unable to function for months after the international backlash against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  • Ukraine’s military said Russian forces had fired about 70 cruise missiles at targets across the country and also deployed attack drones. The strikes killed 10 people and disconnected three nuclear power stations from the grid, officials said.

That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for now. My colleague Rachel Hall will be along shortly to continue bringing you all the latest news from Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Polish leaders say that an air defence system which Germany offered Poland would be best given to Ukraine to help it protect itself against Russian strikes.

Germany said earlier this week that it has offered Warsaw Eurofighter planes and Patriot defence systems to help defend Poland’s airspace after two men were killed when an apparently stray Ukrainian defence projectile fell in Poland near the border with Ukraine, the Associated Press reported.

Poland’s defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, initially said he received Germany’s offer with “satisfaction”.

But following Russia’s heavy barrage of Ukraine on Wednesday, Polish leaders said it would be better if the defence systems were placed in western Ukraine.

The head of Poland’s ruling party, Jarosław Kaczyński, called Germany’s offer “interesting” but said he believed “it would be best for Poland’s security if Germany handed the equipment to the Ukrainians, trained Ukrainian teams, with the caveat that the batteries would be placed in Ukraine’s west”.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Warsaw, Vasyl Zvarych, thanked Błaszczak, saying on Twitter that Ukraine needs as many air defence weapons as it can get.

EU preparing ninth Russia sanctions package, says Von der Leyen

The European Union is pressing ahead with a ninth sanctions package on Russia in response to Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, said during a visit to Finland.

“We are working hard to hit Russia where it hurts to blunt even further its capacity to wage war on Ukraine and I can announce today that we are working full speed on a 9th sanctions package,” von der Leyen told a news conference.

“And I’m confident that we will very soon approve a global price cap on Russian oil with the G7 and other major partners. We will not rest until Ukraine has prevailed over Putin and his unlawful and barbaric war,” she said.

Russia is not planning contact with the United States and did not initiate contact with Washington at the G20 summit in Indonesia, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said on Thursday.

He added that contacts with Washington happen over the phone but take place through diplomatic channels and not at a presidential level.

Meanwhile, Russia’s federal security service (FSB) claimed it has prevented Ukrainian special services from carrying out what it said was sabotage on the “South Stream” gas pipeline, Russian news agencies reported.

The pipeline was a project intended to transport Russian gas through the Black Sea to Bulgaria, although was later cancelled in favour of TurkStream.

Russia and Ukraine met in UAE to discuss prisoner swap – Reuters

Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the possibility of a prisoner-of-war swap, according to a Reuters report.

Any swap would be linked to a resumption of Russian ammonia exports, which go to Asia and Africa, via a Ukrainian pipeline, three sources with knowledge of the meeting told the news agency.

Reuters reported:

The sources said the talks were being mediated by the Gulf Arab state and did not include the United Nations despite the UN’s central role in negotiating the ongoing initiative to export agricultural products from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Ammonia is used to make fertiliser.

However, the talks aim to remove remaining obstacles in the initiative extended last week and ease global food shortages by unblocking Ukrainian and Russian exports, they added. The sources asked not to be named in order to freely discuss sensitive matters.

The Russian and Ukrainian representatives travelled to the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on 17 November where they discussed allowing Russia to resume ammonia exports in exchange for a prisoner swap that would release a large number of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners, the sources said.

Reuters could not immediately establish what progress was made at the talks.


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