The head of Kyiv’s civil and military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, reported fires and fallen debris in several parts of the Ukrainian capital, after AFP journalists heard explosions overnight.
“The capital and the region are again under massive enemy attack. Air defence systems are continuously operating in Kyiv and its suburbs,“ he said on Telegram.
The attack on Kyiv comes hours after Russia and Ukraine completed the first stage of a prisoner exchange agreed at talks last week in Istanbul which, if completed, would be the biggest swap since the start of the conflict.
Russia has signalled it will send Ukraine its terms for a peace settlement after the swap, which is set to be staggered over three days -- without saying what those terms would be.
The two enemies have held regular prisoner swaps since Russia launched its 2022 offensive -- but none have been on this scale.
After they stepped off the bus, tearful relatives rushed to embrace the soldiers while others held pictures of their loved ones, hoping to find out if they had been seen in captivity.
“The first stage of the ‘1,000-for-1,000’ exchange agreement has been carried out,“ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X.
Russia said it had received 270 Russian troops and 120 civilians, including some from parts of its Kursk region captured and held by Kyiv for months.
US President Donald Trump earlier congratulated the two countries for the swap.
Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II have so far been unsuccessful, despite his pledge to rapidly end the fighting.
Captured in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, he had been held for 37 months and 12 days.
Diplomatic push
“We have been looking for our son for two years,“ said Liudmyla Parkhomenko, a mother of a Ukrainian soldier who went missing during combat in the city of Bakhmut.
After 39 months of fighting, thousands of POWs are held in both countries.
With Kyiv not knowing the fate of thousands, each exchange brings surprises, a senior official told AFP.
“Sometimes they return people who were on the lists of missing persons or were considered dead.”
Trump has been seeking to broker an end to the fighting since taking office in January, but has failed to extract any major concessions from the Kremlin.
Moscow has defied European pressure for a full and unconditional truce in Ukraine, pressing on with its three-year offensive, which has left tens of thousands dead.
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