A prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine went ahead on Wednesday, even as rescue workers in Kyiv pulled bodies from the rubble of a residential block hit by a Russian missile strike that killed at least 24 people. The swap, which involved 90 prisoners from each side, was the largest since the early months of the war. It was conducted under a longstanding arrangement brokered by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and came as a rare moment of cooperation between the two warring states.
Yet on the ground in Kyiv, the human cost of the conflict was laid bare. The strike on a nine-storey apartment building in the Sviatoshyn district late on Tuesday left entire families buried under concrete. Emergency services worked through the night, their searchlights sweeping the debris as relatives gathered in the cold, awaiting news.
By Wednesday afternoon, officials confirmed 24 dead, including two children, with at least 20 more injured. The building, once home to around 200 people, was now a jagged shell. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, condemned the attack as “a deliberate act of terror” and called for more air defence systems from Western allies.
Moscow, for its part, denied targeting civilian infrastructure, claiming its forces struck a military storage facility in the area. The exchange of prisoners, meanwhile, prompted guarded optimism. Among those released were Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol and Russian soldiers captured during the Kharkiv counteroffensive.
Each side hailed the return of its servicemen. The swap, however, does not signal a broader thaw. Negotiations for a comprehensive peace deal remain frozen, and the daily reality for Ukrainians is one of blackouts, air raid sirens and the search for loved ones under the rubble.
For the families mourning in Kyiv, the prisoner exchange is a distant abstraction. Their focus is on the missing, the dead and the shattered lives left behind. As one resident told the BBC: “They can swap prisoners all they want.
Our neighbours are gone.” The international community has condemned the strike on the apartment block. The United Nations said the attack “may amount to a war crime,” noting that the deliberate targeting of civilians is prohibited under international humanitarian law.
The European Union called for an independent investigation. But for now, the only justice is the slow, clinical work of extraction teams, pulling body bags from the ruins. The war grinds on, a grim cycle of death and negotiation, with no end in sight.
