On 19 August Ukraine brought 103 service members home from Russian captivity — soldiers, border guards and national guardsmen, among them defenders of Mariupol and troops from eight sectors of the front. It was the first exchange in almost two months.
One hundred and three Ukrainian defenders are home. On 19 August 2026 Ukraine and Russia carried out another prisoner-of-war exchange — the first in almost two months — ending a wait that for some families had lasted months and for others years. Volunteers Support Ukraine counts days like this among the most important entries in the war's chronicle: they are proof that bringing people back is still possible.
Those freed include personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the State Border Guard Service and the National Guard. Among them are troops who held the defence of Mariupol, along with soldiers who fought in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Dnipro and Sumy sectors. Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets specified the breakdown: 101 of them are soldiers and sergeants, two are officers. The oldest of the released men is 59, the youngest 26.
Some of the freed men carry severe wounds or serious illnesses acquired in captivity, and were sent straight into treatment and rehabilitation.
The first thing almost every released prisoner does on Ukrainian soil is phone their family. Ukraine's Security Service published footage of those first minutes — the calls, the embraces, the tears. For the team at Volunteers Support Ukraine, that footage is the most convincing argument there is for not stopping.
The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War stressed that this was only the first stage of another round of exchanges — meaning more returns are still ahead. Russia, according to its own defence ministry, received the same number back: 103 service members.
Announcing the return, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the state remembers every man and woman still held in captivity and is doing everything possible to bring them all home. Regions are already counting their own: eight defenders returned to Zhytomyr region alone.
Coming out of captivity is the start of a long road back: medical care, rehabilitation, a return to ordinary life. Volunteers Support Ukraine works every day so that people affected by this war receive support within the limits of what the organisation manages to collect — and news like this makes that work easier to keep up.
