The Donetsk People’s Republic has not received any official proposals on video conference from Ukrainian officials to discuss the POWs exchange. This was mentioned by DPR Ombudsman, delegate to the Humanitarian Subgroup Daria Morozova in an interview to DAN.
“There weren’t any official proposals neither on the Skype-conference for the Humanitarian Subgroup on December 27th nor on the POWs exchange under the formula proposed by Gerashchenko. I have checked my email several times today and there weren’t any offers,” she said. “That is why I consider these statements to be another publicity stunt by the Ukrainian side.”
Ms Morozova stressed that the exchange formulas allegedly offered by Kiev are not in line with Minsk Negotiations, namely, they contradict the demand of “all for all exchange”.
“We have already made certain concessions when we agreed on the formula “all confirmed for all confirmed.” The Ukrainian side, however, blocked this process completely in 2018. They did not work on the lists,” the Ombudsman noted.
Nevertheless, she claimed that the DPR is willing to negotiate with Kiev and perform the prisoner exchange under the formula established in Minsk.
“As soon as the Ukrainian side stops giving the appearance of work and starts working thoroughly on the exchange list we had sent to them (103 persons confirmed by Kiev and 22 persons on whose whereabouts we also have official confirmation from competent Ukrainian authorities), then we will be absolutely ready for the exchange,” the Ombudsman stressed.
We remind that today the official delegate of Ukraine to the Humanitarian Subgroup in Minsk Iryna Gerashchenko announced the initiative to convene a video conference of the Humanitarian Subgroup on December 27th to discuss the exchange of prisoners under the formula “72 for 19”. Also, Geraschenko announced the date of the expected exchange – January 5th.
