Rus­sia and Ukraine ex­changed hun­dreds more pris­on­ers Sat­ur­day as part of a ma­jor swap that amount­ed to a rare mo­ment of co­op­er­a­tion in oth­er­wise failed ef­forts to reach a cease­fire. The ex­change came hours af­ter Kyiv came un­der a large-scale Russ­ian drone and mis­sile at­tack that left at least 15 peo­ple in­jured.

Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy and Rus­sia’s de­fense min­istry said each side brought home 307 more sol­diers on Sat­ur­day, a day af­ter each re­leased a to­tal of 390 com­bat­ants and civil­ians. Fur­ther re­leas­es ex­pect­ed over the week­end are set to make the swap the largest in more than three years of war.

“We ex­pect more to come to­mor­row,” Ze­len­skyy said on his of­fi­cial Telegram chan­nel. Rus­sia’s de­fense min­istry al­so said it ex­pect­ed the ex­change to be con­tin­ued, though it did not give de­tails.

Hours ear­li­er, ex­plo­sions and an­ti-air­craft fire were heard through­out Kyiv as many sought shel­ter in sub­way sta­tions as Russ­ian drones and mis­siles tar­get­ed the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal overnight.

In talks held in Is­tan­bul ear­li­er this month — the first time the two sides met face to face for peace talks since Rus­sia’s 2022 full-scale in­va­sion — Kyiv and Moscow agreed to swap 1,000 pris­on­ers of war and civil­ian de­tainees each.

Of­fi­cials said Rus­sia at­tacked Ukraine with 14 bal­lis­tic mis­siles and 250 Sha­hed drones overnight while Ukrain­ian forces shot down six mis­siles and neu­tral­ized 245 drones — 128 drones were shot down and 117 were thwart­ed us­ing elec­tron­ic war­fare.

The Kyiv City Mil­i­tary Ad­min­is­tra­tion said it was one of the biggest com­bined mis­sile and drone at­tacks on the cap­i­tal.

“A dif­fi­cult night for all of us,” the ad­min­is­tra­tion said in a state­ment.

Post­ing on X, Ukraine’s For­eign Min­is­ter An­drii Sybi­ha called it “clear ev­i­dence that in­creased sanc­tions pres­sure on Moscow is nec­es­sary to ac­cel­er­ate the peace process.”

Post­ing on X, U.K. For­eign Sec­re­tary David Lam­my spoke of “an­oth­er night of ter­ror for Ukrain­ian civil­ians.”

“These are not the ac­tions of a coun­try seek­ing peace,” Lam­my said of the Russ­ian strike.

Kata­ri­na Math­er­nová, the Eu­ro­pean Union’s am­bas­sador to Kyiv, de­scribed the at­tack as “hor­rif­ic.”

“If any­one still doubts Rus­sia wants war to con­tin­ue — read the news,” Kata­ri­na Math­er­nová wrote on the so­cial net­work.

Air raid alert in Kyiv

The de­bris of in­ter­cept­ed mis­siles and drones fell in at least six Kyiv city dis­tricts. Ac­cord­ing to the act­ing head of the city’s mil­i­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ty­mur Tkachenko, six peo­ple re­quired med­ical care af­ter the at­tack and two fires were sparked in Kyiv’s Solo­mi­an­skyi dis­trict.

The Obolon dis­trict, where a res­i­den­tial build­ing was heav­i­ly dam­aged in the at­tack, was the hard­est hit with at least five wound­ed in the area, the ad­min­is­tra­tion said.

Yurii Bon­darchuk, a lo­cal res­i­dent, said the air raid siren “start­ed as usu­al, then the drones start­ed to fly around as they con­stant­ly do.” Mo­ments lat­er, he heard a boom and saw shat­tered glass fly through the air.

“The bal­cony is to­tal­ly wiped out, as well as the win­dows and the doors,” he said as he stood in the dark, smok­ing a cig­a­rette to calm his nerves while fire­fight­ers worked to ex­tin­guish the flames.

The air raid alert in Kyiv last­ed more than sev­en hours, warn­ing of in­com­ing mis­siles and drones.

Kyiv’s may­or, Vi­talii Kl­itschko, warned res­i­dents ahead of the at­tack that more than 20 Russ­ian strike drones were head­ing to­ward the city. As the at­tack con­tin­ued, he said drone de­bris fell on a shop­ping mall and a res­i­den­tial build­ing in Obolon. Emer­gency ser­vices were head­ed to the site, Kl­itschko said.

Sep­a­rate­ly, 13 civil­ians were killed on Fri­day and overnight in­to Sat­ur­day in Russ­ian at­tacks in Ukraine’s south, east and north, re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties said.

Three peo­ple died af­ter a Russ­ian bal­lis­tic mis­sile tar­get­ed port in­fra­struc­ture in Ode­sa on the Black Sea, lo­cal Gov. Oleh Kiper re­port­ed. Rus­sia lat­er said the strike Fri­day tar­get­ed a car­go ship car­ry­ing mil­i­tary equip­ment.

Rus­sia’s de­fense min­istry on Sat­ur­day claimed its forces overnight struck var­i­ous mil­i­tary tar­gets across Ukraine, in­clud­ing mis­sile and drone-pro­duc­ing plants, a re­con­nais­sance cen­ter and a launch­ing site for an­ti-air­craft mis­siles.

The pris­on­er swap on Fri­day was the first phase of a com­pli­cat­ed deal in­volv­ing the ex­change of 1,000 pris­on­ers from each side.

It took place at the bor­der with Be­larus, in north­ern Ukraine, ac­cord­ing to a Ukrain­ian of­fi­cial who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause he was not au­tho­rized to speak pub­licly.

The re­leased Rus­sians were tak­en to Be­larus for med­ical treat­ment, the Russ­ian De­fense Min­istry said.

POWs ar­rived at the med­ical fa­cil­i­ty in the Cherni­hiv re­gion for a sec­ond day on Sat­ur­day. But for many their ar­rival was bit­ter­sweet.

Those who were not re­unit­ed with their loved ones took so­lace in the re­leased POWs pro­vid­ing some in­for­ma­tion about when their rel­a­tives were last seen.

An­na Marchenko, the daugh­ter of a miss­ing Ukrain­ian ser­vice­man, was elat­ed when a re­leased POW said they had seen her fa­ther.

“This is such a big news. It’s like a fresh breath of air,” she said. “I didn’t see him, but at least it’s some news. At least it’s news that gives us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue to breathe and live in peace.”

How­ev­er, the ex­change — the lat­est of dozens of swaps since the war be­gan and the biggest in­volv­ing Ukrain­ian civil­ians so far — did not her­ald a halt in the fight­ing.

Bat­tles con­tin­ued along the rough­ly 1,000-kilo­me­ter (620-mile) front line, where tens of thou­sands of sol­diers have been killed, and nei­ther coun­try has re­lent­ed in its deep strikes.

Af­ter the May 16 Is­tan­bul meet­ing, Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Hakan Fi­dan called the pris­on­er swap a “con­fi­dence-build­ing mea­sure” and said the par­ties had agreed in prin­ci­ple to meet again.

But Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov said on Fri­day that there has been no agree­ment yet on the venue for the next round of talks as diplo­mat­ic ma­neu­ver­ing con­tin­ued.

Russ­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov said Moscow would give Ukraine a draft doc­u­ment out­lin­ing its con­di­tions for a “sus­tain­able, long-term, com­pre­hen­sive” peace agree­ment, once the on­go­ing pris­on­er ex­change had fin­ished.

Far apart on key con­di­tions

Eu­ro­pean lead­ers have ac­cused Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin of drag­ging his feet in peace ef­forts while he tries to press his larg­er army’s bat­tle­field ini­tia­tive and cap­ture more Ukrain­ian land.

The Is­tan­bul meet­ing re­vealed that both sides re­mained far apart on key con­di­tions for end­ing the fight­ing. One such con­di­tion for Ukraine, backed by its West­ern al­lies, is a tem­po­rary cease­fire as a first step to­ward a peace­ful set­tle­ment.

Rus­sia’s De­fense Min­istry said that overnight and ear­ly on Sat­ur­day its forces shot down over 100 Ukrain­ian drones over six provinces in west­ern and south­ern Rus­sia.

The drone strikes in­jured three peo­ple in the Tu­la re­gion south of Moscow, lo­cal Gov. Dmitriy Milyaev said, and sparked a fire at an in­dus­tri­al site there.

An­driy Ko­valenko, of Ukraine’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and De­fense Coun­cil, said Sat­ur­day the drones hit a plant in Tu­la that makes chem­i­cals used in ex­plo­sives and rock­et fu­el.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP)