Ukraine says plans major prisoner swap with Russia
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko says his country plans to conduct a “large-scale” prisoner swap with Russia.
The two sides exchanged dozens of prisoners on September 7 in a move that appeared to pave the way for the restoration of relations between the two countries after a nearly five-year hiatus over the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Earlier this week, Moscow and Kiev also achieved a breakthrough in talks that would open the way for an international summit aimed at ending the fighting in Ukraine’s east.
“I hope that very soon — and I mean literally next week — we plan an even more large-scale exchange,” Prystaiko said on a talk show on a national TV channel late on Thursday.
There was no immediate confirmation of the specific plan from the Kremlin, but it did say it would be happy to do an exchange.
“The Russian side has long ago said Russia would be happy to do an all-for-all exchange and this must be the final goal,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
He declined to offer a timeline for a swap, saying it depended on the preparedness of the two countries.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began when a wave of protests in the country overthrew a democratically-elected government and replaced it with a pro-West administration.
That new government then began a crackdown on the mainly ethnic Russians in the east, who in turn took up arms and turned the two regions of Donetsk and Lugansk — collectively known as the Donbass — into self-proclaimed republics.
The war has claimed some 13,000 lives since 2014.
Kiev and its Western allies accuse Moscow of having a hand in the crisis, but Russia denies the allegation.
Just before the conflict began in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, then Ukrainian territory, held a referendum to join Russia. More than 90 percent of the participants in the referendum voted in favor of that unification.
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