At the last meeting, the Donetsk People’s Republic once again demonstrated through deeds that it is transparent in the matter of exchanging POWs and is ready to perform it at any time.
We carefully worked out the list of 109 people provided by the Ukrainian side. I officially declare that 42 Ukrainian servicemen were detained on the territory of the Republic. All of them are ready for the exchange under the format prescribed in the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements. I note that Ukrainian representatives confirm only 618 persons out of 964 from our list in Minsk negotiations. Now everything depends on the political will of the President of Ukraine and his plenipotentiaries at the Minsk meetings.
We repeatedly offered Ukrainian negotiators to develop a roadmap for the search for missing persons. We insist on an early resolution of this issue. 489 families asked our help for searching their relatives in the hope of getting at least some information about them. I assume that they might have been captured by Ukrainian forces. However, the figure stated by the UN representatives is even more frightening. This is more than 3,500 people missing since the beginning of armed aggression by Ukraine. I would like to stress that more than 800 bodies are still unidentified, so it is highly important to continue identification work.
I would like to remind that the issue of the return of our men, taken out of the Donetsk People’s Republic to the territory controlled by Ukrainian security forces, remains unresolved. Kyiv representatives have already begun to review the roadmap proposed by UNICEF. We also make our proposals for the document. Unfortunately, the question remains unresolved.
