Collected photo

KYIV, Ukraine, May  25, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Russian strikes killed at least 12
people in Ukraine overnight, officials said Sunday, as Kyiv and Moscow traded
fire even as they completed their biggest prisoner exchange since the start of
the war.

  Ukraine's emergency services described a night of "terror" as Russia
launched a second straight night of massive air strikes, including on the
capital Kyiv.

 The attacks came even as the two countries completed their biggest prisoner
swap since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, with 1,000
captured soldiers and civilian prisoners exchanged by each side.

 The death toll from the latest Russian strikes included two children, aged
eight and 12, and a 17-year-old, killed in the northwestern region of Zhytomyr,
officials said.

 "Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality
cannot be stopped," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.

 "The silence of America, the silence of others around the world only
encourages Putin," he said, adding: "Sanctions will certainly help."

 The European Union's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called for "the strongest
international pressure on Russia to stop this war".

 "Last night's attacks again show Russia bent on more suffering and the
annihilation of Ukraine. Devastating to see children among innocent victims
harmed and killed," she said on social media.

 The renewed strikes came after Russia launched 14 ballistic missiles and
250 drones overnight Friday to Saturday, which wounded 15, according to
Ukrainian officials.

 Ukraine's military said on Sunday it had shot down a total of 45 Russian
missiles and 266 attack drones overnight.

  Russia meanwhile said it had brought down 110 Ukrainian drones.

 Four people were reported dead in Ukraine's western Khmelnytskyi region,
four in the Kyiv region, and one in Mykolaiv in the south.

  Emergency services said 16 people were also injured in the Kyiv region,
including three children, in the "massive night attack".

  "We saw the whole street was on fire," a 65-year-old retired woman, Tetiana
Iankovska, told AFP in Makhalivka village just southwest of Kyiv.

 Another retiree who survived the strikes, Oleskandr, 64, said he had no
faith in talks around a ceasefire.

 "We don't need talks, but weapons, a lot of weapons to stop them (the
Russians). Because Russia understands only force, nothing else," he said.
       
       - Major prisoner exchange -
       
  Russia said Sunday it had exchanged another 303 Ukrainian prisoners of war
for the same number of Russian soldiers held by Kyiv -- the last phase of the
prisoner swap agreed during talks between the two sides in Istanbul on May 16.

 Russia and Ukraine had over three days "carried out the exchange of 1,000
people for 1,000 people", the defence ministry said.

 Zelensky confirmed the swap was complete.

  Both sides received 390 people in the first stage on Friday and 307 in the
second stage on Saturday.

 Russia has signalled it will send Ukraine its terms for a peace settlement
after the exchange, without saying what those terms would be.
       
       - Diplomatic push -
       
 US President Donald Trump on Friday congratulated the two countries for the
swap.

 "This could lead to something big," he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

  Trump's efforts to broker a ceasefire in Europe's biggest conflict since
World War II have so far been unsuccessful, despite his pledge to rapidly end
the fighting.

 An AFP reporter saw some of the formerly captive Ukrainian soldiers arrive
at a hospital in the northern Chernigiv region, emaciated but smiling and
waving to crowds waiting outside.

 "It's simply crazy. Crazy feelings," 31-year-old Konstantin Steblev, a
soldier, told AFP Friday as he stepped back onto Ukrainian soil after three
years in captivity.

  One of the soldiers formerly held captive, 58-year-old Viktor Syvak, told
AFP it was hard to express his emotional homecoming.

 Captured in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, he had been held for 37
months and 12 days.

 "It's impossible to describe. I can't put it into words. It's very joyful,"
he said.