Almost 200 Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war have returned home following a prisoner swap, officials on both sides report, while the bodies of two British aid volunteers killed in Ukraine were also recovered.
The Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said 116 Ukrainians had been returned, while Russian news agencies cited Moscow's defence ministry as saying 63 Russian POWs had been freed.
He said the released POWs include troops who held out in Mariupol during Moscow's months-long siege that reduced the southern port city to ruins, as well as guerilla fighters from the Kherson region and snipers captured during the ongoing fierce battles for the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that since the war started last February, Ukraine had secured the release of 1,762 men and women from Russian captivity.
Russian defence officials said those released by Ukraine included some "special category" prisoners whose release was secured following mediation by the United Arab Emirates.
A statement issued on Saturday by the Russian Defence Ministry did not provide details about these "special category" captives.
Mr Yermak also confirmed the bodies of British volunteer aid workers Chris Parry and Andrew Bagshaw had been sent back to Ukraine.
Mr Parry and Mr Bagshaw were killed during an attempted humanitarian evacuation in eastern Ukraine in January, Mr Parry's family has previously said.
At least three civilians have been killed in Ukraine during the past 24 hours as Russian forces struck nine regions in the country's south, north and east, according to reports on Ukrainian TV by regional governors on Saturday morning.
Two people were killed and 14 others wounded in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region by Russian shelling and missile strikes, local Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a Telegram update on Saturday morning.
The casualty toll included a man who was killed and seven others who were wounded on Friday after Russian missiles slammed into Toretsk, a town in the Donetsk region.
Mr Kyrylenko said that 34 houses, two kindergartens, an outpatient clinic, a library, a cultural centre and other buildings were damaged in the strike.
Seven teenagers received shrapnel wounds after an anti-personnel mine exploded late on Friday in the north-eastern city of Izium, local Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram.
He said they were all hospitalised but their lives were not in danger.
Elsewhere, regional Ukrainian officials reported overnight shelling by Russia of border settlements in the northern Sumy region, as well as the town of Marhanets, which neighbours the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Kyiv has long accused Moscow of using the plant, which Russian forces seized early in the war, as a base for launching attacks on Ukrainian-held territory across the Dnieper river.
key point:
Officials from Ukraine and Russia say 116 Ukrainians and 63 Russians were freed in a prisoner swap.