WSJ Lifts the Lid on POW Exchange Channel Between Ukraine and Russia
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, Ukraine and Russia have exchanged more than 10,000 prisoners of war through a covert communication channel that military historians say is almost unprecedented in modern armed conflict.
The Gaze reports this, referring to The Wall Street Journal.
The backchannel emerged in the spring of 2022 during fierce fighting near Kyiv. Brigadier General Dmytro Usov, deputy head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (HUR), discovered a mobile phone in the pocket of a dead Russian officer.
Calling one of the numbers stored in the device, he made a direct offer: “Your officer is dead… the bodies of your men for ours.” That first contact set the stage for a unique system of exchanges.
Two months later, Usov, known by the callsign “Stayer,” established a line of communication with GRU (Russian military intelligence) Lieutenant General Aleksandr Zorin, a seasoned Russian commander involved in operations in Libya and Syria.
Usov later described Zorin as “a head above” other Russian counterparts he had dealt with. Their early talks led to the evacuation of over 2,500 Ukrainian defenders from Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant.
As the mechanism developed, mediators from Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia joined the process.
In Kyiv, HUR’s headquarters became the nerve center for organizing exchanges, locating POW families, monitoring Russian websites and social media for information, and compiling detailed prisoner profiles, including physical descriptions and Red Cross status.
Released soldiers often returned with lists of comrades still in captivity, speeding up subsequent swaps.
The operation has endured despite high risks. The WSJ cited incidents such as the downing of a Russian Il-76 aircraft carrying Ukrainian POWs, and proposals to trade convicted collaborators or even the remains of long-dead Russian agents.
As The Gaze reported earlier, Ukraine’s most recent, 67th exchange freed 84 citizens from Russian captivity, including 33 soldiers and 51 civilians.