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What happened on 3 January 2024 in the war?
Summary
A prisoner exchange and a Turkish refusal on the Black Sea marked the day, after missile strikes on Kharkiv and Kyiv the day before.
What did the war look like on 3 January 2024? It brought one exchange of captives and one diplomatic refusal, set against the aftermath of a heavy night of strikes.
On 3 January 2024, Ukraine and Russia completed their first prisoner exchange in nearly five months. Each side released more than 200 people. The United Arab Emirates mediated and facilitated the swap.
The same day, Turkey denied access to the Black Sea to two Royal Navy minehunters. Ankara said that sending the vessels through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits would violate the Montreux Convention of 1936. The decision touched on the wider question of military aid to Ukraine during the war, and on relations between Turkey and Ukraine.
The strikes that came before
The exchange followed a day of violence. On 2 January 2024, a Russian missile attack on Kharkiv killed four civilians and injured nearly 100 others. A separate Russian missile attack on Kyiv injured at least 27 civilians.
Taken together, the reports from 2 and 3 January 2024 show a war in which attacks on cities continued even as the two sides arranged a large exchange of prisoners through a third-party mediator.
