Ukrainian authorities and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have completed what was billed as an “all-for-all” prisoner swap near the village of Horlivka on December 29, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said.
Relatives and supporters of the former captives handed over to the Ukrainian side were converging on Kyiv’s Boryspil Airport to meet them upon their arrival in the capital.
The swap, reportedly of around 200 prisoners in all, included fighters from the separatist ranks and civilians and servicemen long held in the breakaway regions.
“Mutual release of detained persons has ended, ” the presidential office said in a tweet, adding, “76 of ours are safe in Ukraine-controlled territory. Details later.”
Serhiy Sivoha, an adviser to the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council, told Ukraine’s Hromadske TV that Ukraine had gotten 76 of its nationals back and handed over 127 detainees within the framework of the exchange.
Earlier, the UNIAN news agency had quoted a representative of the Donetsk separatists as saying that the Ukrainian side was expected to hand over 87 people, while the separatists were set to swap 55.
The swap was the second major prisoner exchange involving Ukrainians caught up in the conflict in four months.
It included the handover to the government side of two RFE/RL contributors who had been held by separatists since 2017: Stanislav Aseyev and Oleh Halaziuk.
The notion of an “all-for-all” prisoner exchange gained momentum during peace talks in Paris on December 9 among the so-called Normandy Four — Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany — trying to bring an end to the five-year conflict.
In the last swap, Russia and Ukraine traded a total of 70 prisoners in a move that many regarded as progress in efforts to deescalate a war that has killed more than 13,000 people since Moscow forcibly annexed Crimea and Russia-backed gunmen grabbed swaths of eastern Ukraine including parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014.
Russia insists it is not a party to the conflict, despite significant evidence that includes communication with separatist leaders, captured Russians, and Russian casualties in the fighting.
After the swap on December 29, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv tweeted out congratulations of “liberated captives from Russia-controlled Donbas” and specifically cited “Russia’s ongoing aggression [that] confronts Ukraine’s leadership with difficult choices.”
In Moscow, the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had welcomed the prisoner swap as a “positive” development, AFP reported.
There was controversy ahead of the planned swap when families of protesters killed by riot police during pro-Western unrest in 2014 publicly objected to any of the police officers convicted in those killings being part of a trade.
Families of the victims of the riot policemen warned in an open letter on Facebook to Zelenskiy that the release of the men could lead to a “wave of protests.”
“We would like to inform you that these people are neither participants nor victims of the conflict in eastern Ukraine,” they wrote.
