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Moscow, Russia:
Moscow said on Friday that dozens of residents of the Russian border region of Kursk had been deported back to Russia from Ukraine after extraordinary and “difficult” talks between Moscow and Kiev.
Kiev launched a major ground offensive in the Kursk region in August, seizing large chunks of Russian territory home to thousands of civilians.
It was unclear why the residents were transferred to Ukraine, and there was no immediate comment from Kiev.
Russian human rights ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova said that “today 46 residents of the Kursk region returned to Russia from Ukraine as a result of the negotiation process with Ukraine”.
According to local governor Alexey Smirnov, all the residents were from the Sudzhansky district, home to the border town of Sudza, which was seized by Ukraine shortly after it launched its offensive.
“Hard work and long negotiations to repatriate our compatriots have borne fruit,” he said in a telegram.
He added that 12 children were among the residents and were brought back via Belarus, all of whom were provided with “all necessary assistance”.
One of the children returned in the deal was three-year-old Darina, her mother Anastasia Gardina told AFP.
“They’re already on their way. In four hours I’ll meet Darina,” she said.
Grudina had gone to Moscow for temporary work, leaving her daughter with her grandmother in the village of Lebidyuka in the Kursk region when Ukraine launched its offensive.
In October she told AFP she was pleading for help “everywhere”, even writing a personal letter to President Vladimir Putin.
At one point he tried to cross the front line himself but had to retreat.
The deal comes at a tense moment in the Ukraine conflict, after Kiev fired British- and US-supplied long-range missiles into Russia and Moscow fired hypersonic missiles at its neighbor.
The limited return of civilians, along with the exchange of captured soldiers and bodies of slain fighters, have become the only areas of cooperation between the two sides, which have been fighting since Moscow launched its full-scale offensive in February 2022. .
(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
