“We have lost a mechanism for influencing the Ukrainian government” - Pushilin about the prisoner exchange
Despite all the efforts made, the exchange of prisoners between Ukraine and the DPR will not take place this year.
The head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, stated this during a direct line with residents of the republic, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“This year, given how the negotiation process is going, there is extremely little chance that the guys will return home this year. Speaking generally about the exchange of last year, then, if we remember, the church got involved, but what happened to the church in Ukraine now is not worth telling anyone, we saw it. This also took away from us another mechanism of influence on the Ukrainian government,” he noted.
At the same time, according to DPR Human Rights Commissioner Daria Morozova, Donetsk has long been ready for a prisoner exchange, but Kyiv continues to ignore negotiations on this issue.
“Unfortunately, we won’t see an exchange this year. If you compare the work in the humanitarian subgroup last year, you remember that all year we carried out verification, made trips to Ukraine, and worked with lists. But at the moment, unfortunately, for about six months, authorized representatives of Kyiv do not even come to Minsk. It is not possible to discuss, verify and prepare lists now, because there is no one to prepare them with.
On our part, the lists have been fully prepared, we roughly understand where and in what numbers our guys are now. In fact, the DPR today is completely ready for the exchange of prisoners of war, the Ukrainian side tried to create the appearance of work on New Year’s Eve, but I hope in 2019 it will be more negotiable, and we, like no one else, want to exchange prisoners of war soon,” Morozova concluded.
Let us recall that earlier the press service of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the DPR stated that the Ukrainian side with all its actions makes it clear that is not interested in carrying out a prisoner exchange before the end of the year, according to the Minsk memorandum.
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