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President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed more ‘retribution’ against Russia on Ukrainian Independence Day Saturday, as Kyiv and Moscow announced the exchange of 230 prisoners just over two weeks into Ukraine’s surprise offensive on Kursk. 

Zelensky also signed a law banning the Russian-linked branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and called the legislation a ‘liberation from Moscow’s devils’.

Kyiv marked its independence from the Soviet Union at a tense moment in the long war as it mounts a push into Russia and Moscow eyes more east Ukrainian towns.

Zelensky published a video of him standing in a hilly, forested area said to be near from where Ukraine launched its shock incursion on August 6.  

‘What the enemy brought to our land has now returned to its home,’ he said, adding that Russia will ‘know what retribution is.’ 

He called President Vladimir Putin a ‘sick man from Red Square who constantly threatens everyone with the red button,’ referring to nuclear war.

Zelensky later said that one of the ‘goals’ of Kyiv’s Kursk operation was to show Russians ‘what is more important to him (Putin): the occupation of the territories of Ukraine or the protection of his population.’   

Kyiv has also said that the Kursk offensive aimed at stretching Russia’s reserves from eastern Ukraine.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with army chief Valery Gerasimov with the Kremlin saying they had discussed ‘countering enemy forces invading the Kursk region and measures being taken to destroy them.’

The Kremlin’s choice of language was a break from previous statements that downplayed the Ukrainian surprise move. 

While it has visibly rattled Moscow, Ukraine’s Kursk operation has not slowed Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine.

As Ukraine celebrated independence, Kyiv said a Russian strike on a residential of the easter city of Kostyantynivka, which lies near the frontline in the Donetsk region, killed five people.

AFP witnessed a young boy and his dog walk up to a body, covered by a sheet, on the side of the road and watch as rescuers rushed to remove it. 

People embraced standing next to another body, covered by a silver sheet, before emergency services removed it in a black body back. 

Ukraine has also carried out some evacuations from the hub of Pokrovsk amid fears it will fall to advancing Russian forces.

Both Kyiv and Moscow said they had returned 115 captive servicemen each in a deal brokered by the United Arab Emirates. 

Zelensky published photographs of men wrapped in Ukrainian flags and Kyiv’s ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said dozens of those included Azovstal fighters from the 2022 epic battle for the steelworks in Mariupol.

Ukraine has said one of th aims of its Kursk operation was to gain more Russian captives to get back its men from Russia.

Widespread reports of young conscripts going missing in Kursk have filled the Russian internet in recent days.

Moscow released images of young-looking men on a bus, saying it freed 115 servicemen ‘taken prisoner in the Kursk region.’

Russia said the troops were currently in Belarus and will be brought to Russia soon.

At Kyiv’s Sofia Square in front of St Michael’s Cathedral, Zelensky said a new law banning the Russian-linked church ‘protects Ukrainian Orthodoxy from Moscow’s dependence.

Ukraine has been seeking to distance itself from the Russian church since 2014 and those efforts have accelerated since Russia’s 2022 invasion. 

Russia’s invasion has been backed by the country’s Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill, a staunch ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Russia has slammed the move as ‘illegal’ and its church earlier this week said Ukraine’s law was comparable to ‘persecutions in the Roman Empire in the times of Nero and Diocletian.’  

As Zelensky vowed more retribution for Russia, Ukraine’s military intelligence said it had carried out a ‘successful’ attack on an ammunition depot in Russia’s southern Voronezh region, near the town of Ostrogozk.

Russia said Saturday its air defences had destroyed seven Ukrainian drones over its southern Voronezh region and Belgorod and Bryansk border regions, with the Voronezh governor reporting the evacuation of a village.

Voronezh governor Alexander Gusev earlier said a state of emergency was declared in the Ostrogozk district after drone strikes, with 200 people evacuated from one village.

Gusev did not say exactly what was struck but said one woman was hospitalised in a ‘serious condition’.