Russia and Ukraine change hundreds of prisoners, hours after the largest rocket-and-drone attack in Moscow

Kyiv, Ukraine – Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds of more prisoners on Sunday, the third and final part of a large grant that reflected a rare moment of cooperation in other failed efforts to reach a ceasefires in the more than three years of war.

Only a few hours earlier, Ukrainian capital, Kiev and other regions came under a massive Russian drone-and-racon attack that killed at least 12 people and were injured. Ukrainian officials described it as the largest air raid since the full invasion of Russia in Ukraine in February 2022.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said that every party brought 303 more soldiers to home, after each had released a total of 307 fighters and civilians on Saturday and 390 on Friday – the biggest swap of the war.

The Ukrainian President Volodyymyr Zenskyy confirmed the exchange and said on X on X on Sunday that “303 Ukrainian defenders are at home.” He noted that the troops who returned to Ukraine were members of the “forces, the National Guard, the State Border Guard Service and the Special Transport Service of the State.”

In conversations that were held in Istanbul earlier this month – the first time that the two parties have met since the eye of the face for peace talks since – Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war and civilians each.

The largest air raid of the war

The Scale of Onslaught was amazing-Russia with 367 drones and missiles, the largest mere air raid of the more than three years of war, according to Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine Air Force.

In total, Russia used 69 missiles from different types and 298 drones, including Iranian drones, he told the Associated Press.

There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the strikes.

For Kyiv, the day was particularly gloomy when the city of Kyiv Day observed, a national holiday that falls on the last Sunday in May, to commemorate the founding in the 5th century,

Zenskyy said that Russian missiles and drones touch more than 30 cities and villages and encouraged Western partners to increase sanctions on Russia – a long -term question from the Ukrainian leader, but one that has not been moderialized in ways to get rid of Russia despite warnings to Moscow.

“These were intentional strikes on ordinary cities,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, and added that the goals of Sunday Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, Ternopil, Chernopil Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Cherkasy Regions were.

“Without really strong pressure on Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped. Sanctions will certainly help,” said Zenskyy. “Determination is now important – the determination of the United States, of European countries and of everyone around the world seeking peace.”

The prisoner -wap was the only tangible outcome of peace talks in Istanbul earlier this month, which has not ceased so far -fires and a rare moment of cooperation between the warring parties.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said Eman, while his air defenses shot down 110 Ukrainian drones at night.

Another ‘sleepless night’

The sound of explosions flourished all night in Kiev and the surrounding area when the Ukrainian air defense continued to exist for hours in attempts to shoot Russian drones and rockets. According to the security service, at least four people were killed and 16 injured in the capital itself.

“A difficult Sunday morning in Ukraine after a sleepless night,” said the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha on X, adding that the attack “lasted all night.”

Branden broke out in houses and companies, left by falling drone rubble.

In the Zhytomyr region, west of Kiev, the emergency service said that three children were killed, 8, 12 and 17 years old. Twelve people were injured in the attacks, said it. At least four people were killed in the Khmelnytskyi region, in western Ukraine. One man was killed in the Mykolaiv region, in southern Ukraine.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko of Kyiv said that a student dormitory in the Holosiivskyi district was hit by a drone and one of the walls of the building was on fire. A private house was destroyed in the Dniprovskyi district and windows were smashed in a residential building in the Shevchenkivskyi district.

The size of the Russian use of air weapons aside, the attacks in the last 48 hours are one of the most intense strikes on Ukraine since the invasion of February 2022.

A village flooded in smoke and rubble

In Markhalivka, just outside Kyiv, where various village houses were burned down, the Fedorenkos looked their destroyed house in tears.

“The street looks like Bakhmut, such as Mariupol, it’s just terrible,” says 76-year-old Liubov Fedorenko, who compares their village with some of the most destroyed cities of Ukraine. She told the AP that she was grateful that her daughter and the grandchildren had not joined them for the weekend.

“I tried to persuade my daughter to come to us,” said Fedorenko, adding that she told her daughter, “you finally live on the eighth floor in Kiev, and here it is the ground floor.”

“She said,” No, Mom, I’m not coming. ” And Godzijdank did not come because the rocket (the house) hit the side where the children’s rooms were, “Fedorenko said.

Ivan Fedorenko, 80, said he regrets that he dropped their two dogs in the house when the air strikes left siren. “They burned dead,” he said. “I want to bury them, but I am not allowed yet.”

Despite POW -Swaps, no dismissal in the war
The POW exchange was the last of dozens of Swaps since the war started, but also the largest involved Ukrainian citizens.

Yet it did not stop the fighting. Fights have continued along the approximately 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) front line, where tens of thousands of soldiers were killed and neither of them admitted in its deep strikes.

The Russian Ministry of Defense quoted Yaroslav Yakimkin from the “North” group of Russian troops and said on Sunday that Ukrainian troops were pushed back from the border in the Kursk region, who visited Putin days ago.

“The troops keep going forward every day,” said Yakimkin, adding that the troops of Russians have taken Marine and Loknya in the northeastern Sumy region in Ukraine, which borders Kursk last week, and went up in the Kharkiv region around the largely destroyed city of Vovhansk.

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Yeroshenko reported from Markhalivka, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Elise Morton in London contributed to this report.