n unannounced mass prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine took place on the night of September 22, 2022, fuelling a variety of claims and comments from both sides of the conflict.
The exchange, first reported by Saudi officials acting as intermediaries, took place in Saudi Arabia, with the involvement of local political leaders as well as Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Newsweek Fact Check analyzed some of the more prominent claims and narratives surrounding the exchange.
As details of the swap began to seep through into the media, they fueled angry and speculative claims among pro-Moscow and pro-Kyiv social media accounts and channels.
215 defenders of Ukraine released from captivity: 200 of them exchanged for Medvedchuk," tweeted the Ukrainian Pravda in English.
"The Azov leaders captured in Mariupol have been released, among Ukrainian fighters swapped for Putin's oligarch pal Medvedchuk. Once again, this undermines all Putin's crap about denazification, swallowed by a few useful idiots in the West," one commentator wrote.
"The Azov PoWs were swapped for Medvedchuk. In May Peskov [Putin's spokesman] said this will never happen because Medvedchuk is not a Russian citizen, and in any case not a member of the military," wrote Kira Yarmysh, Alexey Navalny's lawyer, in Russian.
Screenshots of pro-Russian military bloggers and Russian internet users fuming at the decision were also shared widely following the swap.
"Who is Medvedchuk? Why do we need this ***hole? They swapped him for 200 nazis. I have no faith, none. Sadly," one user appeared to say in a screenshot of a Telegram chat.
"We gave up all of the Azov prisoners for him? What kind of gesture of goodwill is that," wrote another.
The tweet featuring the collection of screengrabs was shared by a pro-Ukraine blogger on Twitter called Max Scherbina, receiving more than 3,500 interactions.
While the prisoner exchange has indeed taken place, as confirmed by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky along with Saudi, Turkish and Moscow-installed officials, some of the details being shared on social media are not accurate.