.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Friday that 49 Ukrainian POWs had actually been come back coming from Russia, with AFP seeing the team being actually welcomed at the perimeter with Belarus.Zelensky did not clear up whether it belonged to an exchange along with Russia, as is actually often the scenario, yet AFP writers had actually previously found Russian prisoners of war being actually filled onto a bus near the borderline.It would be actually the second substitution between the warring nations due to the fact that Kyiv's unpleasant surprise incursion right into Russia's Kursk location.Zelensky claimed civilians were actually additionally among the returnees, including a "gal who was actually taken hostage when she related to look after her sick father.".He claimed the substitution likewise featured fighters from Mariupol's 2022 Azovstal war, and also soldiers, border protections and also policemans.AFP contacted pair of females in their 20s covered in Ukrainian flags and receiving blooms, who said they went to the Azovstal vegetation that fell to Russia after a siege in 2022." I am actually ultimately home, I can't believe it," mentioned 28-year-old Tamara Miroshnikova, commander of an equipped car of Ukraine's National Protection, mentioned.An additional woman, 29-year-old Tetiana Bugay, mentioned she was actually a medic at the Azov unit that fought for Azovstal.Previously, AFP viewed the Ukrainian army steering Russian POWs in a bus, some were putting on hoods concealing their skins, which were cleared away as they were packed into a minivan.AFP talked with several of them briefly, and all those that talked said they were captured in the course of Ukraine's unpleasant surprise Kursk onslaught final month.