Russia and Ukraine have conducted a prisoner of war exchange involving nearly 200 servicemen from each side, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has announced.

In a statement on Friday, the ministry said, “185 Russian servicemen were returned from territory controlled by the Kiev regime. In exchange, 185 Ukrainian Armed Forces prisoners of war were transferred.”

The swap was carried out with humanitarian mediation from the United Arab Emirates, according to the Defense Ministry.

The Russian servicemen are currently in Belarus, where they are receiving psychological and medical assistance. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova is working with them, the ministry added.

After receiving the necessary care, the servicemen will be transported to Russia for further treatment and rehabilitation in medical facilities operated by the Defense Ministry.

The latest exchange follows a series of prisoner swaps between Moscow and Kiev in recent months. On May 15, the two sides returned 205 POWs each, also with UAE mediation.

In April, Russia and Ukraine carried out exchanges involving 193 and 175 servicemen on each side. In March, they conducted swaps under the formulas ‘200 for 200’ and ‘300 for 300’, with the US and UAE involved in mediation.

READ MORE: Ukrainian drone attacks kill four in Crimea – governor

Russia and Ukraine have continued to exchange prisoners and the bodies of fallen soldiers despite the ongoing conflict. The UAE has repeatedly acted as a mediator in humanitarian efforts.

Western sanctions must be “ignored,” the first deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, Vladimir Chistyukhin, said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday. He added that Russia should deepen its financial sovereignty and build payment infrastructure less exposed to external pressure.

Speaking at the forum’s “Reassembling the Global Financial System” session, Chistyukhin joined government officials, economists, and bankers in discussing alternatives to the Western-dominated financial system.

Russia has been promoting its own payment infrastructure since many of the country’s financial institutions were cut off from SWIFT following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Alongside its SPFS financial messaging network, Moscow has expanded the Mir payment system and developed digital-ruble and cryptocurrency initiatives for cross-border transactions.

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According to Chistyukhin, finance has become a tool of external pressure and Russia needed diversified platforms, including more domestic payment and rating systems, to stay resilient under Western sanctions.

“At some stage, these sanctions must be ignored and not recognized,” he said, adding that 88% of Russia’s settlements with partners from friendly countries were now conducted outside currencies of ‘unfriendly’ states, while 12% still used them. 

Olga Goncharova of the Association of Russian Banks said the reset has already begun, as regulators move digital currencies and cryptocurrencies into legal frameworks. Digital currencies have become a major workaround for Russian and non-Russian banks seeking to maintain trade flows despite Western efforts to isolate Moscow. Goncharova pointed to experimental cross-border use and an offshore ruble stablecoin as part of a shift toward national-currency settlements.

READ MORE: Russian SMEs growing on stronger supply chains to giants

Economic commentator Alexey Bobrovsky noted that financial weapons have been used historically, citing how the US “destroyed” the British pound sterling in the 20th century, and said countries must now treat such tools as a lasting feature of global finance. He added that cryptocurrencies cannot fully replace traditional ones due to high energy costs, predicting the world would evolve toward a mix of traditional currencies supported by digital assets.

Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov said the world was already moving toward decentralized platforms and more national instruments, but the process would take years and would not be simple.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking part in the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. He is expected to comment on a backhanded offer of peace talks by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky.

Putin is appearing at the forum’s main event alongside Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, and Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud.

The Russian leader spoke to heads of international news agencies on Thursday, discussing progress in the conflict with Ukraine, as well as the potential role of the EU in settling the conflict should European leaders “abandon their colonial approach and talk to Russia as an equal partner.” Putin also discussed Russia’s ‘Oreshnik’ ballistic missile, saying that the three uses of the system so far have allowed the Russian military to “make decisions in the future on the full-scale use of Oreshnik against designated targets, including in urban areas.”

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin would likely comment on a recent letter from Zelensky during the plenary session. In the letter, Zelensky levied an array of insults at the Russian president and threatened Russia with drone strikes, before asking Putin to meet for peace talks in a third country.

The EU is fully aware that Ukrainian accession would be disastrous for the bloc, and would sooner see the country join NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told RT.

The US-led military bloc controversially declared its intention to admit Ukraine in 2008, setting in motion a political spiral that sparked a coup – after which Kiev declared NATO membership an official policy – a civil war, and eventually the conflict with Russia.

The heads of NATO states have promised membership to Kiev on a number of occasions, with the caveat that the conflict with Russia must be concluded first, but nothing has been delivered, much to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s embarrassment.

Speaking on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday, Lavrov said Western countries regard Ukraine as a proxy to be used against Russia – not as a genuine partner

”The reason Europe wants Ukraine in NATO is because they’d rather do that than make the fatal mistake of letting it into the EU, because then the EU would just fall apart,” he said. “They know it perfectly well. But NATO is fine in their eyes.”

The continued support for Kiev shows that EU officials “want to preserve the current Nazi regime indefinitely without requiring it to comply with the UN Charter, with numerous international conventions, or even with its own constitution,” Lavrov argued.

He also pointed to remarks by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who repeated that Ukraine will eventually become a member during his latest trip to Kiev. Rutte apparently “couldn’t care less” that US President Donald Trump has stated that Ukraine will not join NATO, the foreign minister said.

READ MORE: US mulls placing nukes in more NATO countries – FT

While the Trump administration has failed to carry out its own plan for ending the Ukraine conflict, the EU has not even been able to resume dialogue with Russia, Lavrov said. “In its current condition, under its present leadership and elites, I regard [Europe] as a lost cause for diplomacy.”

Watch the interview.

America’s position on the Ukraine conflict has become almost indistinguishable from that of the EU, making US President Donald Trump’s stated ambition to mediate an end to the fighting hollow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told RT.

Trump repeatedly blamed the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on his predecessor, Joe Biden, and claimed that he could bring it to a swift conclusion while campaigning in 2024.

However, recent statements by members of his administration suggest a different course, Lavrov said on Thursday in an interview on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“Biden’s war has become Trump’s war,” the Russian foreign minister said.

Speaking to Congress this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said efforts to facilitate Russia-Ukraine talks were complicated “because, frankly, we’re not an impartial mediator.” He cited the continuation of the sanctions on Russia and sales of US weapons to Ukraine.

“After we agreed to the United States proposal in Anchorage [in August 2025], Washington began to shift its position. Instead of advancing those same proposals in its dealings with Ukrainians, it is now pretending that the parties should sort things out themselves. This is not a very consistent position,” Lavrov said.

“It is the West that cannot be trusted to keep its agreements. Its approach is: ‘I’ll promise something now, then stall for time.’ If the US had truly advanced its own initiative, I think… the fighting would already have stopped.”

READ MORE: Can’t handle the truce: Trump has redefined ‘ceasefire’ in the Middle East

According to Lavrov, the only major difference between Trump’s policy and that of Biden and the EU is that his administration resumed direct talks with Russia. Dialogue is important, he said, but it must be matched by action on commitments already made.

Watch the entire interview.

Losing what had been a quasi-guaranteed seat on the UN Security Council has caused considerable embarrassment across the German diplomatic establishment, which had openly talked of securing a permanent seat in New York.

Berlin had won unopposed or as the favorite in all previous cases, is the second-largest contributor to the UN, and the latest vote was presided over by its former foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock – now the president of the UN General Assembly.

The gaffe-prone, staunchly pro-Israel Baerbock, however, may have proven more of a hindrance than a help, according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

“Over the past year, countries had the misfortune of watching a representative of the German political elite, Annalena Baerbock, serve as president of the UN General Assembly. They decided not to take any more chances,” she said on Telegram.

In the wake of the vote, the Russian media ran headlines stating that Germany “failed” to secure a UNSC seat and was “left empty-handed,” while describing statements by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul – who had suggested that Russia was to blame for Berlin’s failed bid – as “startling.”

If Berlin is so determined to find someone to blame for its failure, it might as well look in the mirror, experts and journalists said.

‘Predictable result of overconfidence’

Germany’s “special responsibility” for Israel has long turned into “unconditional support, including the military one” for all of West Jerusalem’s actions, Russian news outlet RG wrote in a lengthy piece on the issue.

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Over the past several months alone, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party has urged Berlin to stop financing the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and called for tougher criteria Palestinians must meet to get aid, it noted.

“During the UN vote in May on assistance to Palestinians, German representatives chose to abstain, whereas Austria – which will now join the UN Security Council – voted in favor of the initiative,” the outlet wrote.

It noted that “Israel’s neighbors, as well as other countries of the Global South, see this ‘subservient’ position of Germany quite clearly.” The debacle at the UN vote was a “predictable outcome” of Berlin’s “overconfidence,” it added.

‘Distorted’ diplomacy

Guided by the West’s “values-based” unipolar world order dream rather than its own national interest, Germany has lost all the qualities that once made it an influential actor on the world stage, Artyom Sokolov, a senior fellow at the MGIMO Institute for International Studies, told the Izvestia news media outlet.

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Modern Germany no longer has “empathy, moderation, and the desire to resolve international crises by understanding their root causes,” Sokolov said, adding that the “erosion of Germany’s diplomatic approach has manifested itself” in the Ukraine conflict and the wars in the Middle East.

“Today, these strengths that once made Germany an influential player on the international stage have been significantly distorted, and this is what led to the failure of Germany’s bid.”

Izvestia also wrote that the development would deal a serious blow to Merz and Wadephul’s plans to expand Germany’s global influence and push forward Berlin’s bid for a permanent UNSC seat.

No need to blame Russia

Wadephul makes it sound as if Russia somehow “instigated” other nations to “punish” Germany for its “uncompromising stance on Ukraine and Israel,” analyst Sergey Poletaev, a member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy think tank, told RT, adding that Berlin could just be trying to shift the blame for its own policy mistakes.

“Most countries dislike Germany’s uncompromising stance on Ukraine and Israel, and so they want to see more reasonable European representatives on the Security Council, like Portugal and Austria, which they voted for,” he said, maintaining there was “no need to drag Russia into this.”

“This is what international isolation looks like, Mr. Wadephul.”

Looming isolation?

The UN debacle might be the first sign of Berlin’s continued rejection of true multipolarity backfiring, well-known German author, journalist, and political commentator Alexander Rahr told Russia’s VZ newspaper.

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“Germany remains skeptical of the concept of a multipolar world order,” he said, adding that Berlin still prefers to rely on institutions and concepts associated with the “unipolar” one. “In many countries of the Global South, this stance is increasingly viewed with frustration,” he added.

Berlin’s lack of criticism of Israel as well as its attempts to portray its support of Ukraine as some sort of a higher moral calling make its claims of being the defenders of international law and universal values sound “inconsistent” in the eyes of many nations outside Europe, Rahr believes.

“Germany… continues to strongly emphasize its support for Ukraine and Israel and remains committed to its values-based foreign policy. This could further deepen the divide between Germany and much of the international community,” he warned.

“It remains to be seen whether this trend points to Germany’s growing international isolation or merely reflects broader shifts in the global balance of power and the ongoing formation of a new world order.”

A monument to Kiev-born Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov has been dismantled in the Ukrainian capital as Kiev continues to remove, rename, and erase cultural sites and memorials associated with its common Russian and Soviet history.

The statue, located near the Bulgakov Museum in one of Kiev’s best-known historic districts, became a target of Ukraine’s broader campaign to remove symbols deemed connected to “Russian imperial culture.”

The Kiev City Council voted in December to remove 15 objects from public spaces, including monuments to Bulgakov, poet Anna Akhmatova, and composer Mikhail Glinka.

“A historic moment! Bulgakov is already gone,” Ukrainian journalist Ekaterina Nekrecha said in a video posted on Facebook on Thursday, showing the monument being taken away by workers.

Bulgakov, born in Kiev in 1891, wrote primarily in Russian and became one of the 20th century’s most influential authors. He is best known for ‘The Master and Margarita’ and ‘The White Guard’.

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Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory previously classified Bulgakov as a symbol of “Russian imperial policy,” arguing that the continued public commemoration of his name amounted to propaganda of Russian narratives. The institute’s expert commission described him as “an imperialist by worldview” and “an ardent Ukrainophobe.”

The dismantling has reignited debate over how Ukraine should treat cultural figures whose identities cut across Russian and Ukrainian history. Critics of the campaign argue that erasing writers such as Bulgakov risks flattening Ukraine’s complex past and whitewashing uncomfortable chapters of its own history.

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Bulgakov’s ‘The White Guard’, set during the turmoil of the Russian Civil War in Kiev, depicts the collapse of the old order and the violence of competing forces in the city, including the nationalist troops of Symon Petliura, whose forces have long been associated by historians with anti-Jewish pogroms.

The removal comes as Ukraine continues to rename streets, dismantle Soviet-era symbols, and cancel historical figures under its ‘decommunization’ laws. The process, launched after 2014 and accelerated after 2022, has expanded from Soviet political monuments to writers, composers, and other cultural figures linked to Russia.

READ MORE: Here’s how Russians react to being addressed in Ukrainian (VIDEO)

Moscow has condemned the destruction of cultural heritage and attacks on historical memory, accusing Kiev of violating international norms and infringing on the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Russian officials have described the campaign as an attempt to rewrite history and sever Ukraine from its cultural roots.

Russian President Vladimir Putin fielded questions from the heads of international news agencies on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday. The agencies included Chinese, Belarusian, German, French, Spanish, and Iranian state news outlets, as well as representatives of Reuters and AP.

The mammoth Q&A session lasted just over two hours and touched on a variety of subjects, including Russian domestic and foreign policy, the Ukraine conflict, and potential routes to rapprochement with Europe.

Here are the main topics discussed.

The West’s ultraliberal model has reached a “civilizational dead end” and is increasingly restricting the rights of its own citizens, journalists, and political movements, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

Speaking at a panel on Europe’s future on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Zakharova argued that a system which once promoted “freedom, democracy, and human rights” is now facing an ideological crisis as it struggles to uphold those principles at home.

”We are witnessing the civilizational dead end of an ultraliberal model that only yesterday claimed to literally teach and reprogram the entire world,” she said. “Today, this model cannot even guarantee the declared rights of its own citizens.”

According to Zakharova, political parties, journalists, and public organizations in Western Europe increasingly face pressure if they challenge the dominant narrative. “Either you keep quiet, or you go to jail,” she said.

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She argued that the rise of the internet ended the West’s monopoly over information, prompting authorities to rely on major technology companies to suppress dissenting views. Artificial intelligence, she warned, could become the next stage in what she described as a growing “digital dictatorship.”

Most Western nations imposed sweeping restrictions on RT and other Russian media outlets following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. RT content was subsequently removed or limited on major digital platforms, including YouTube, where the network had amassed around 30 million subscribers before the restrictions were introduced.

Concerns over censorship and restrictions on public debate have helped fuel support for conservative movements across much of the West. Parties such as Germany’s AfD, France’s National Rally, Italy’s Brothers of Italy, and the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom have gained ground by criticizing political elites, mainstream media, and policies on issues including immigration and national sovereignty.

Russia’s PSB bank plays a significant role in the new regions of the country, and the organization has been actively developing infrastructure in these territories since June 2022, PSB Deputy Chairman Mikhail Dorofeev said in an interview with RT on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“We now have 456 offices… Our clients include almost 3 million individuals and more than 110,000 legal entities. Over this period, we have built a Russian banking system there,” Dorofeev said.

The bank is now present in 147 localities across all four new regions, including dangerous areas.

“In such dangerous areas as Kakhovka and Novaya Kakhovka, offices are open,” he said.

Speaking about the bank’s international operations, Dorofeev mentioned the work of the A7 platform, which provides services for international cross-border transfers. According to the PSB deputy chairman, this is an example of successful public-private partnership.

“The main currencies in our payments are the yuan, the dirham, and the ruble. By the end of 2025, the turnover of the Russian ruble and the currencies of friendly states exceeded 85%,” he added.

At the same time, Africa is a strategic direction for PSB: over the next two years, the bank plans to open offices in 20 countries on the continent.

Responding to a question about the use of artificial intelligence in PSB’s operations, Dorofeev emphasized that in banking, AI is viewed as a tool, not a replacement for people.

In its current understanding, artificial intelligence is above all the processing of large volumes of data, though it is also used for routine operations such as preparing simple documents and working in call centers.