Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the leader of the Russian-backed separatists based in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, announced that a long-awaited prisoner exchange between the Kyiv government and the Russian proxy forces in Donetsk and Luhansk would take place on Dec. 27.
The last prisoner swap took place 15 months ago. The Ukrainian government says that at least 168 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are being held by the Russian proxies in Donbas, but the separatists acknowledge only 94 prisoners and ready to exchange 74.
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According to Zakharchenko, these 74 captive Ukrainians will be exchanged for 306 separatists and people related to them that are held by the Ukrainian government.
It will be the largest prisoner swap during the war that has been raging since 2014 and saw more than 10,000 people killed.
Zakharchenko announced the swap on Dec. 25 in Moscow after the meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox church leader. Zakharchenko’s Luhansk counterpart Leonid Pasechnik and Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin politician Viktor Medvedchuk also participated in the meeting.
Earlier the negotiators from both sides agreed to exchange all the prisoners whose presence was officially confirmed by the other side before the New Year and Christmas holidays.
The prisoner swap was several times postponed over the year due to the disagreements between the sides. In mid-December, the Russian proxy forces demanded the additional names be included into the exchange list, which put at risk the entire exchange process.
Lawmaker and Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Iryna Gerashchenko, Ukraine’s representative in Minsk contact group said on Dec. 25 that the sides were finalizing the “logistics and technical details” of the exchange for the swap.
Gerashchenko added that the government will keep on trying to release the rest of Ukraine’s prisoners in the next exchanges.
“They will give us only 74, we had to unblock the process of the release,” Gerashchenko said in a Facebook post. “But we have to release all.”
