Kyiv rejects Putin's claim Ukraine walked away from 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner swap
The Office of the President of Ukraine told Suspilne that Vladimir Putin's claim Kyiv had refused a large-scale prisoner exchange "does not correspond to reality," insisting work on the deal is actively moving forward and rests on Washington acting as guarantor. Putin had told state media after the May 9 Victory Day parade that Russia tabled 500 Ukrainian POWs for swap on May 5 and that Ukrainian negotiators "went off the radar." The proposed Trump-brokered "1,000-for-1,000" exchange — the largest since the 2022 invasion — was timed to a May 9-11 truce that Russian drones have already broken in Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk.
Ukraine's Office of the President on Saturday rejected Vladimir Putin's claim that Kyiv had refused a large-scale prisoner exchange. Speaking to Suspilne, a source inside the Office said the Russian president's account "does not correspond to reality" and that work on the swap is actively moving forward. "Since the agreement was reached through the mediation of the United States, the actual implementation of the exchange depends on the ability of the American side to act as its guarantor," the source added. "Active contacts on this issue are currently ongoing."
Putin had used a state-media interview after the May 9 Victory Day parade — relayed by the Telegram channel Astra — to allege that Russia had offered a list of 500 Ukrainian POWs for exchange on May 5, that Ukrainian negotiators "went off the radar," and that Kyiv eventually told Moscow it was "not ready for the deal." He said Russia continued to support President Donald Trump's "1,000-for-1,000" initiative and was waiting for a "corresponding reaction" from Ukraine.
The proposed swap, totalling 2,000 detainees, would be the largest since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Washington brokered the format and Kyiv has cast the deal as the most significant humanitarian milestone yet of the war. President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously said that "the lives of Ukrainian POWs" outweighed any military strikes on Moscow during the holiday period and credited US mediation with the breakthrough; he has tied the deal's execution to whether Washington can hold Russia to its commitments.
The exchange was synchronised with a three-day ceasefire that Putin announced for May 9 to May 11. That truce is already failing on the ground: Russian drone strikes have continued to hit civilian targets in Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk, with fatalities and injured children reported on the first day. The dispute over the prisoner swap follows a series of unresolved POW threads that Ukraine has been trying to push since early May — the case of detainees held in Chechnya, a transfer of 70 convicted collaborators under the "I Want to Go Home" project on May 4, and a tally of more than 1,000 civilians and military still held by Russia since 2022. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on May 9 that Washington remained ready to mediate Ukraine-Russia peace talks should an opening present itself; the May 11 truce deadline is now the immediate test of whether that opening exists.