石井辰彦　Tatsuhiko Ishii

I met with mayors from cities across Ukraine – from all parts of the country – including Kharkiv, Dnipro, Uzhhorod, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Cherkasy, Mykolaiv, and Vinnytsia. Also present were acting mayors of Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk, and Rivne, as well as the Executive Director of the Association of Ukrainian Cities, the President of the Ukrainian Association of District and Regional Councils, and the Head of the Kharkiv Regional Council. Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi was there as well. This was the first dialogue in this format, and it will now take place regularly. Preparing cities and communities for the winter period is a priority, especially given Russia’s strikes on Ukraine’s critical and transportation infrastructure and residential buildings. Energy, air defense, internal security threats, reliable communications, and helping our people – all of this needs to be protected, restored, and ensured. We openly discussed all the challenges we face now and those that may lie ahead. We talked about how we will respond at the central level and at the regional and local government levels. The key is to ensure that accurate information about what is happening on the ground reaches us promptly from every region and city, and that the necessary decisions are made accordingly. We also discussed finding mechanisms to help people who may face hardship during the winter. It is also important to preserve the financial capacity of communities. The main thing is to work together and deliver real results for Ukrainian society and our state. I thank everyone who is doing exactly that.

We count on a truly large-scale prisoner exchange, and we take very seriously the wording our American partners are using: that this should be the largest exchange of this war. More than a thousand people from each side. This is extremely sensitive for many Ukrainian families. And right now, the teams, the special services, the intelligence agencies – the Coordination Headquarters – all are working to make the exchange happen. I expect a report on the details of the preparations shortly.