The Contact Group for the Settlement of the Situation in the East of Ukraine agreed on the conditions for the release of the detainees and their exchange between Kiev and the self-proclaimed republics. This was announced by the representative of Russia in the contact group Boris Gryzlov.

“An extraordinary meeting took place today, it took place by videoconference ... Representatives of Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk, with the participation of intermediaries - Russia and the OSCE - managed to agree on the necessary conditions for the release and exchange of detainees by the end of the year,” RIA Novosti transfers Gryzlov. .

The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Natalya Nikonorova, called the past meeting breakthrough.

“This is what we have not been able to achieve in two years. Ukraine has finally reaffirmed its obligations to apply to persons who return the exchange procedures to guarantee their release from criminal punishment and prosecution, ”she said.

Nikonorova explained that the exact number of people exchanged will become known after the verification of people scheduled for December 27-28, who, according to the Ukrainian side, refused to participate in the procedure. During the verification, which will take place in the presence of the OSCE coordinator, these refusals will confirm or refute.

In turn, the representative of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic Rodion Miroshnik said that the exchange will take place according to the formula “all installed on all installed”. According to him, during the negotiations it was possible to remove the main problem that impeded the exchange - the decriminalization of the transferred persons.

Information on the existence of agreements was confirmed by Daria Olifer, spokeswoman for the representative of Kiev at the talks, ex-president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.

“During the videoconference of the tripartite contact group, an agreement was reached on the mutual release of the detainees by the end of the year, as stipulated by the results of the summit of the leaders of the Norman Four countries in Paris,” she said.

  • Archival photo. 12/27/2017. Ukrainian prisoners during the exchange of prisoners between the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics and Kiev on neutral territory between the villages of Mayorsk and Gorlovka
  • RIA News

Earlier in an interview with Ukrinform, the Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vadim Priestayko said that some of the lists for the exchange of held persons in the Donbass have already been agreed. According to him, Kiev wanted to finalize the lists in order to return the maximum number of people before the New Year.

“Therefore, the OSCE coordinator decided to hold a videoconference without delay and complete work on the lists,” he said.

The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky also announced the need to exchange held persons by the end of 2019

“I would like our people to celebrate the New Year with their families in Ukraine. This is a very personal question for me. I really really want a big exchange, ”he said.

Recall that in Paris on December 9, negotiations were held between the leaders of the participating countries of the “Norman Four”. Presidents of Russia, France and Ukraine Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Zelensky, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel following the summit adopted a joint statement in which, among other things, they called on the tripartite contact group in Minsk to facilitate the release of all detainees and their exchange in all-in-all format.

Prior to this, the exchange of prisoners between Kiev and the Donbass took place on December 27, 2017. Then the DPR and LPR transferred 73 people, and Kiev - 238. This exchange became the largest on the whole time of the conflict.

Recall that on September 7, 2019, the exchange of held persons between Russia and Ukraine took place according to the “35 by 35” formula. Among those released by the Ukrainian side was the chief editor of RIA Novosti Ukraine Kirill Vyshinsky, who was detained in Kiev in 2018 on suspicion of "treason." Russia, in turn, handed over to Ukraine 24 Ukrainian sailors who were detained in November 2018 for violating the Russian border in the Kerch Strait, as well as director Oleg Sentsov, convicted of terrorism in Russia.

The exchange of prisoners captured during the conflict in Donbass, according to the “all for all” formula, is one of the basic conditions of the “Set of measures to implement the Minsk agreements”, agreed in February 2015 by the leaders of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine, and signed by representatives of Moscow, Kiev, OSCE, DNI and LC.