The operation "started at the Maiorsk checkpoint" in the Donetsk region, "the Ukrainian presidency announced on social media. Kiev and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine launched on Sunday December 29, the first prisoner exchange since 2017.
According to Daria Morozova, mediator of the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic, out of the 87 people whom the pro-Russian separatists asked for, around 20 refused to be handed over. For its part, Kiev must be handed over 55 prisoners, she told Russian media. Since Kiev did not give any figures, "an audit is underway," a Ukrainian source told AFP.
Ukrainian soldiers, activists, journalists ...
Two coaches from the separatist territories arrived in the morning on land guarded by armed Ukrainian soldiers near the village of Odradivka, in the area controlled by Kiev, some ten kilometers from the front line. Some of the passengers visible on board covered their faces.
Three other buses escorted by the police arrived half an hour later from the opposite direction, followed by several ambulances, Red Cross cars and observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe .
As for the pro-Russian Donetsk separatists, Russian television showed detainees, supervised by armed soldiers.
According to unconfirmed media reports in Ukraine, the separatists should release mainly Ukrainian soldiers but also activists or journalists who have been imprisoned.
Pro-Russian fighters and riot police
In addition to fighters detained during the conflict, Kiev could exchange three men sentenced to life imprisonment for having committed an attack in Kharkiv in February 2015, as well as former riot police detained in Ukraine for their alleged involvement in the repression bloody protests in Maidan Square in 2014. Events that took place before the start of the war in eastern Ukraine.
The possibility of the release of these former police officers aroused the indignation of many Ukrainians and an association of families of victims called on President Volodymyr Zelensky to give it up.
Some 200 protesters gathered on Saturday evening, media reports said, outside a Kiev prison to try to prevent their exchange.
"This country has no future," wrote Volodymyr Golodniouk bitterly on Facebook, whose son Ustym was killed at the age of 19 during the uprising in Kiev.
Relaxation with the Kremlin
The principle of the exchange before the end of the year had been established and demanded by the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky on December 9 in Paris, where the first peace summit on Ukraine was held since 2016.
He then met there for the first time the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, under the auspices of France and Germany. Progress even if the meeting did not result in concrete progress on the withdrawal of heavy weapons, the restoration of control of Kiev on its border with Russia or the organization of local elections in these regions.
Since the election of Volodymyr Zelensky in April, there has been some relaxation with the Kremlin.
In September, Kiev and Moscow exchanged 70 detainees, including the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, imprisoned in Russia.
With AFP
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