On 21 July, a meeting of the members of the Humanitarian Subgroup of the Contact Group on the settlement of the conflict in Donbas was held in the format of video-conference. During the conference, all current agenda items were discussed.
Unfortunately, sides didn’t reach agreement on the lists of the new exchange, however, the work in this direction continues. The separate theme of the meeting was the discussion of “procedural cleansing” of persons, liberated during the exchanges on 29 December 2019 and 16 April 2020. The position of the Ukrainian side isn’t clear, because of its statement about absence of necessity to protect interests of mentioned persons by their representatives in their territory.
Thus, according to Kiev, liberated persons allegedly are able to cross the border of Ukraine by themselves without the threat of criminal prosecution. However, recent detaining of the former participant of the exchange Sergei Pastukhov by security officials of Ukraine proves the contrary.
I’m looking forward to early settlement of this issue, because further exchanges depend on the implementation of obligations on “procedural cleansing” of detained persons. It is necessary to make an effort people of both sides may come home to their families as soon as possible.
