Donbas militants and Russian authorities are currently retaining 133 Ukrainian nationals, the release of whom is a condition for the Minsk agreements to be implemented in full, Ukraine's negotiator in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group, Petro Poroshenko Bloc deputy Iryna Gerashchenko said.
“According to the list that we use within the Minsk group, while the Security Service of Ukraine compiles an amended list, 133 Ukrainians are being kept today, both on the occupied territory and in the Russian Federation. The total number is 133 people,” she said in a live show of Ukraine’s 5 TV television channel broadcasted on Wednesday night.
The list includes Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada deputy Nadia Savchenko, film director Oleh Sentsov, journalist Maria Varfolomeyeva, Gerashchenko remarked. “All of them must be freed. This is in implementation of Paragraph 6 of the Minsk Agreements, the release of all the detained,” she said.
Gerashchenko also stressed that without humanitarian obligations exercised, and the release of the illegally retained is one of them, there is no way that the parties may proceed with implementing the political provisions of the Minsk Agreements, she said.
