MOSCOW, February 27. /TASS/. The number of Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner and being kept in the Donetsk People’s Republic is estimated at thousands, the DPR’s acting head Denis Pushilin has said.
"There are thousands of POWs," he said on the Rossiya-24 TV news channel on Monday.
Pushilin’s adviser Yan Gagin told TASS on February 16 that some Ukrainian POWs had rejected the offer of being exchanged and volunteered to participate in efforts to repair the damage caused to the region.
On November 1, 2022, Pushilin said that the DPR authorities were doing their utmost to secure the return home of the maximum number of prisoners of war from Ukraine. He also emphasized that there were enough POWs on the proposed exchange list. He added that Ukraine was interested in exchanging only "the most high-profile personalities", which significantly slowed down the exchange talks.