Exchange negotiations have been disrupted – Kyiv is being meanly cunning
The first stage of negotiations of the humanitarian subgroup in Minsk was not crowned with success - Ukrainian representatives are deliberately delaying the process of discussing and implementing the exchange of prisoners according to the “all for all” formula enshrined in the Minsk agreements.
He reports this on his the official website Commissioner for Human Rights in the DPR Daria Morozova, reports PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Official Kyiv is trying to interpret in its own way the formulas spelled out in the set of measures and the communiqué of the last summit. We have not been presented with a legal mechanism for the release of persons participating in the exchange, which makes it difficult to implement the agreements reached.
Moreover, the Ukrainian side is once again resorting to attempts to divide the exchange process into several stages, as was the case in 2017 and did not lead to any results. At the moment, we are awaiting a second round of negotiations for a more constructive conversation,” the Ombudsman said.
Representative of the LPR in the humanitarian subgroup, head of the working group on the exchange of prisoners of war Olga Kobtseva also stated lack of progress in the negotiations and announced the actual breakdown of the exchange agreements by Kiev.
“Unfortunately, today at the meeting of the humanitarian group it was not possible to reach agreements on the exchange of detained persons due to the lack of a mechanism on the Ukrainian side for the procedural clearance of people who are subject to exchange.
Due to Kiev’s actual breakdown of the exchange agreements, at the meeting we were unable to discuss the opening of additional checkpoints between Ukraine and the Republic.
It can be stated that Ukraine today actually disrupted the achievement of agreements on two decisions reached at the Normandy meeting,” Kobtseva concluded.
The results of the negotiations were commented on by Odessa journalist and blogger Yuri Tkachev.
“The first round of negotiations on the exchange of prisoners in Minsk - the same ones that Zelensky supposedly triumphantly agreed upon in Paris - ended in nothing. According to the Strana publication, the Ukrainian side again offers its own interpretation of the agreements: the phrase “all for all” they propose to read “all convicted for all convicted.”
What's the logic? The logic is that only those who already have a guilty verdict fall under this reading, and those who are kept in prison before the verdict do not...
That is, the interpretation of “all for all” as “all convicts for all convicts” will allow the Ukrainian side not to extradite most of those who are subject to exchange.
And moreover: since the Paris communiqué states that this will be an exchange of “all for all,” there is a high probability that, having exchanged “all convicts for all convicts,” Ukraine will say that this point of the Minsk agreements has been fulfilled, and the exchanges no longer.
And those people who “fly by” this exchange will most likely continue to sit - to sit, I repeat, without a verdict, simply because because,” he said in his Telegram-channel.
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