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07 September 2019Exchange of prisoners between Moscow and Kiev. A Ukrainian state plane took off from Vnukovo airport in Moscow carrying Ukrainian citizens freed from Russia. The news is reported by the Ukrainian press agency UNIAN.

On board the plane, an Antonov An-148, traveling 35 Ukrainians released. Among them the sailors captured last year by the Russians off the Crimea and the director Oleg Sentsov. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at Kiev Borispil Airport.

Sentsov's arrest, on charges of plotting for an attack in the Crimea, had raised an international protest campaign.

Simultaneously a plane carrying 33 Russian detainees in Ukraine took off from Kiev Borispol airport. On board there is also the head of the Ukrainian branch of the Russian news agency Ria Novosti, Kirill Vyshinsky, accused of high treason by the Ukrainian authorities and of which in recent days a court had ordered the release. Another prominent detainee in the liberated group is Vladimir Tsemakh, "commander" of pro-Russian separatists in action in Donbass and who international investigators consider a key witness in the case of the shooting down of the Mh17 flight over the skies of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Few days ago, Kiev ordered the release on bail of Tsemakh.

The prisoner exchange should revive the Minsk agreements to end the conflict in the Donbass.