The nearly 300-person swap, the largest exchange of prisoners since the war started in February, involved the release of 215 Ukrainians, 55 Russians, a Putin confidant and 10 foreign nationals, including two Americans.“They realized the consequences of how the deal would look to the public.” When the exchange took place on Sept. 22, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed it as a “victory for our state” while the Kremlin came under rare criticism from pro-war nationalists who decried the release of fighters long characterized by Russia as battle-hardened neo-Nazis.Russia’s annexation puts world ‘two or three steps away’ from nuclear war The exchange occurred as Putin came under additional domestic pressure over his partial military mobilization of reservists to bolster his beleaguered war effort in Ukraine.The middleman exchanging messages between Moscow and Kyiv was Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who is under sanctions by the European Union for his close ties to Putin.“The fact that Azov commanders must now holiday in Turkey for the rest of the special military operation as a condition for their exchange is a bit of a mockery,” Dmitry Seleznev, a nationalist blogger, wrote on his Telegram channel after the trade was announced."