The last days of summer have given much hope to dozens of families of Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea.
State leaders, lawyers, and human rights officials have all hinted that a major exchange of Ukrainians for Russians imprisoned in Ukraine may soon take place as a result of negotiations between President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
“I’m personally working on this issue,” Zelensky told journalists on Aug. 23. He added that “the first results should be seen in the coming days.”
On the same day, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, vaguely confirmed “the start of dialogue” between Zelensky and Putin. He also said Putin discussed the possible prisoner exchange with French President Emmanuel Macron during a visit to France in mid-August.
Insiders and the families of prisoners are tight-lipped about the number and names of people who would be included on the exchange list. But a few leaks in the media suggest it would be dozens of people on both sides. There are at least 120 Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia and Crimea.
If the exchange takes place, it will be the first mass release of Ukrainians from Russian prisons since Russia started its war against Ukraine in 2014. During more than five years of fighting, Russia has released only seven Ukrainian political prisoners.
Signs of exchange
At least eight Ukrainian political prisoners have recently been transferred to Moscow from prisons in different Russian regions, which many saw as a sign of their imminent release.
On Aug. 29, Russian media reported that the most famous Ukrainian political prisoner, Crimean film director Oleg Sentsov, was transferred from a prison in Siberia to a jail in Moscow. Sentsov’s lawyer, however, hasn’t confirmed this.
Sentsov, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Russia, nearly died in 2018 after 145 days on hunger strike, during which he demanded the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners.
On Aug. 20, Russian journalist Victoria Ivleva said she had delivered the food parcels for five Ukrainian political prisoners to Moscow’s Lefortovo jail. They include Volodymyr Balukh and Oleksandr Kolchenko, who were captured in Crimea, Ukrainian nationalists Stanislav Klykh and Mykola Karpyuk, who were sentenced for alleged fighting on the Chechen side in the First Chechen War, which both deny.
The fifth prisoner was Pavlo Hryb, a 21-year-old student who had been abducted in Belarus in 2017, illegally transferred to Russia and sentenced to six years in Russian prison for alleged terrorist activity. Hryb has severe liver problems and his father said he could die in prison without urgent treatment.
The next day, Ivleva reported that she had also delivered parcels for Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko, 63-year-old pensioner Olexii Syzonovych and one more Ukrainian political prisoner, whose relatives asked that she not give his name.
On Aug. 22, citing its own sources, Russia’s RBK news website reported that Kyiv and Moscow had agreed to release 33 people each. RBK did not give the names.
Another potential sign of the approaching exchange was the release of Ukrainian-Russian journalist Kirill Vyshynsky. Many expected Vyshynsky to be up for prisoner exchange.
The former head of the Kyiv office of Russia’s propagandistic RIA-Novosti news agency, Vyshynsky was arrested in Kyiv in May 2018 and is charged with high treason. In July, Zelensky offered to exchange Vyshynsky for Sentsov.
Based on its sources in the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Ukrainska Pravda news website reported that Vyshynsky might be released separately from the main swap in exchange for Sentsov, Kolchenko, and Sushchenko.
How many prisoners?
Maria Tomak from the Media Initiative for Human Rights counts at least 120 Ukrainians currently imprisoned in Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in March 2014.
They include Ukrainian nationals who protested the annexation of Crimea, were arrested in Russia for opposing the country’s aggression against Ukraine, or are just seen by Russia as Ukrainian nationalists. About 35 of them are currently held in Crimea, Tomak said. Sixty-eight prisoners are Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea whose activists are widely persecuted by Russian authorities.
There are also 24 Ukrainian military sailors, who were captured by the Russian coast guards and officers of the FSB security service in neutral waters of the Black Sea near Crimea in November. Ukraine sees them as prisoners of war, while Russia, which doesn’t admit its involvement in the war against Ukraine, is trying them as criminals in civilian courts for allegedly trespassing on Russian territory. In May, an international maritime court ordered Russia to release the Ukrainian sailors, but Moscow said it would not recognize the court’s jurisdiction in this case.
On the other side of the border, there are also from 22 to 25 Russians who were captured by Ukrainian authorities in the war-torn Donbas region or other parts of Ukraine. They are charged with fighting or engaging in terrorist or subversive activity against the Ukrainian state, said Olga Reshetylova, from the Media Initiative for Human Rights, who keeps a record of imprisoned Russians.
The figure differs depending on whom one considers Russian. Some of the prisoners have double nationalities and refuse to be sent to Russia through exchange procedures.
The activists of the Media Initiative for Human Rights also counted at least 130 military and civilian Ukrainian prisoners detained on the territory of the Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. The last major prisoner swap between the Ukrainian government and Russia’s proxies there happened in December 2017, when 74 Ukrainian prisoners were released in exchange for 233 people imprisoned in Ukraine.
Tomak said that, while the prisoner exchange with the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas is a part of the regular peace talks in Minsk, the situation with Ukrainians imprisoned in Russia and Crimea is much more difficult.
“There are no platforms for negotiations about these people,” she said.
Previous releases
Since 2014, there were just four cases when Ukraine managed to reach a deal with Russia on the release of its nationals from Russian prisons, Tomak said.
In May 2016, Russia released Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko when Putin pardoned her after years of negotiations and pressure on Russia. In June 2016, Russia also released Crimean activist Gennadiy Afanasyev and pensioner Yuriy Soloshenko, who traveled to Moscow for personal reasons in 2014 but was captured there and accused of spying for Ukraine. These two were released in exchange for Olena Hlishchynska and Vitaliy Didenko, pro-Russian journalists from Odesa sentenced in Ukraine for separatism.
In October 2017, through the mediation of Turkey, Russia released Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov, two Crimean Tatar politicians and leaders of the Mejlis, the highest representative body of the Crimean Tatar people.
In March 2018, Russian authorities released two Ukrainian border guard officers, Ihor Dziubak and Bohdan Martson, in exchange for two Russian FSB officers, Vladimir Kuznetsov and Askar Kulub. The Ukrainian border guards were kidnapped by Russians in October 2018 in Sumy Oblast while patrolling the state border. The two Russians were captured by Ukrainian soldiers in June 2017, when they sailed by boat from Crimea to Ukrainian mainland territory. They claimed they had gotten lost.
