How prisoner exchanges happen and why a place on a list cannot be requested

Updated July 30, 2026

This is the question I am asked most often, and almost always in despair: a person is in captivity, and how the thing his return depends on actually works is written down nowhere. I describe what I see from where I stand — and separate straight away what I know from what I do not.

Who takes the decisions

An exchange is an agreement between two states, not a humanitarian gesture and not a deal between private people. On the Ukrainian side it is handled by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War; every list is agreed by both sides, and it can change up to the last hour.

No blogger, volunteer or journalist takes part in that decision. Myself included. All any of us can do is make sure a person does not get lost in the paperwork, and there the influence ends.

Where the lists come from

The lists are drawn up by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. You cannot sign up for them: not for money, not through an acquaintance, not through a well-known name.

The criteria and the order of priority are set by the Headquarters, and the Headquarters explains them publicly. I will not retell them in my own words — to get this wrong is to give a person false hope.

What is visible from where I stand

I record conversations with prisoners. Some of the people I have spoken to on the record later go home — and that is the little of it I see with my own eyes from beginning to end.

Second: in May 2025 I published a list of the 205 people of the 64th exchange, by name. Lists are the only thing that turns the word “exchange” from a news item into specific people with names.

Third: the exchange fund. For Ukrainian defenders to come home, the person being exchanged for them has to exist — and that is described separately.

If someone asks you for money

A place on a list is not for sale, because it is not for sale to anybody. Anyone offering to speed up an exchange for money is a fraudster, whatever name he gives. You can check whether it really is me writing to you against the list of my real addresses.

If someone asks you for money for a place on a list, write to me. There have been such cases already and I dealt with every one of them: publicity, and the police if the person is willing to file a statement. Information about people like that is worth sending me, and it will not go without thanks. The same is covered in the “Terms of Use”.