Commander of the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine "Azov" Colonel Denys Prokopenko has reported that out of 160 servicemen released in an exchange with the RF on Friday, only 16 are "Azov" fighters, while more than 600 remain in captivity.
"16 servicemen of the 1st Corps of the NGU ‘Azov,’ and among them only 1 Azov fighter who defended Mariupol. This is the exact number of our fighters out of the 160 Ukrainian prisoners of war who returned home today," Prokopenko wrote on Facebook on Friday.
He emphasized that if everyone involved in the exchange process does not start looking for new approaches to returning "Azov" fighters, the process of their release could drag on for decades.
"The Azov fighters do not have this time. They are dying in captivity from torture. Every day they lose their health due to the lack of proper nutrition and medical care. And the state of the human psyche after so many years in Russian prisons can only be imagined by those who have spent a long time there themselves. More than 600 Azov fighters have been in inhumane conditions for over four years," Prokopenko wrote.
The commander noted that the corps successfully finds and applies more and more new solutions that change the situation on the battlefield in our favor, and "it has been high time for a very long time to start doing this with the issue of prisoner of war exchanges for the ‘Azov’ brigade as well."
"These people saved Ukraine at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Will Ukraine repay them for this by saving them?" Prokopenko concluded.
As reported, earlier on Friday, as part of the 76th exchange with the RF, 160 Ukrainian servicemen returned to Ukraine, all of whom had been in Russian captivity since 2022. "They defended Ukraine in Mariupol and at ‘Azovstal,’ in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy directions," Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram on Friday.
