On the meeting of the humanitarian subgroup in Minsk, the Ukrainian side has once again given a demonstration of its inability to stick to its own obligations and fully respect the Minsk Agreements. It only generates noise in the media, which is groundless.
The Ukrainian side does not reinforce its statements with official proposals. They make highlight declarations about a gesture of goodwill towards the release of 15 DPR supporters. In Minsk, the Ukrainian representatives refer to technical reasons that allegedly prevent the release procedure. Technical reasons has never been an obstacle to transfer our people, this procedure is well-established. Perhaps, the reason is that our opponents lack the willingness to perform the exchange. They have recently transferred three illegally detained persons to the buffer zone without any worm clothing and documents. Still and all, they did it. Those people enjoy freedom now. The fact is that the staff of the Security Service of Ukraine cannot explain why a citizen, who was sentenced to 5 years in prison, is now free. The most interesting question is why they cannot release the others. In the current meeting, the authorized representative of the Ukrainian side promised that every person released shall have the act of pardon and identity documents.
Yesterday, the representatives of the Ukrainian side in the humanitarian subgroup mentioned granting pardon to 10 persons from the list. However, the official Decree of Mr. Poroshenko confirms only 9 of them. The Ukrainian side makes humane statements despite of the fact that they keep senior women born in 1947 and 1950 imprisoned. Even the OSCE represented by Mr. Frish asks to liberate them.
I underline that our side makes every effort to perform the transferring if we claim to do so. We do not play to the crowd, we keep our promises.
The game of figures is a usual tactics of the Ukrainian representatives in the humanitarian subgroup. Thus, they mentioned the figure of 228 DPR supporters in the last meeting. For the present moment, the list includes both the representatives of DPR and LPR according to the Ukrainian side. The list was compiled and the figures were justified in a very selective way. The SSU staff raided remand centre selectively, called to those persons, who had been released a long time ago in order to get two kinds of papers: consent to the exchange and refusal to the exchange. More than 200 persons from the claimed list were not even called by the Ukrainian security officers.
Yesterday, they presented the list of 220 persons to us. After a brief review, I can say that there are names of those three men, who were transferred to the buffer zone this weekend, and of 15 men, who are meant to be released by a gesture of goodwill, and of about 50 persons, who have already been released. The impression is that the list was compiled by incompetent staff in haste. The surnames were not even ordered, the list was made selectively and randomly.
I would like to remind the Ukrainian side that the formula 1:4, which they proposed, is not provided by the Minsk Agreements. The document requires “all for all” formula. It is not possible to pick and choose from the clauses of the Agreements. I cannot understand it – isn’t the Ukrainian side fed up with lying to the mothers of the captives? What about other men? We insist that the exchange would be performed before the New Year through “all for all” formula. Each person matters for us. We will struggle for liberation of all people, who are in our lists.
Concluding the Minsk negotiations, I would like to stress that we call upon the Ukrainian side to perform the great exchange through the formula stipulated in the Package of Measures for the implementation of the Minsk Agreements. Our opponents have all necessary resources. It is possible to proceed, as demonstrated by the Ukrainian side itself. The only thing that lacks is the willingness of Mr. Poroshenko.
On any day before the Ney Year, even on the New Year’s Eve, I’m ready to stand on the checkpoints and receive each person released by the Ukrainian side, each of those from our list. It doesn’t matter how much time the procedure takes, it is very important for me that all our men would be released from Ukrainian prisons as soon as possible.
