Judging by the West’s reactions to the Ukraine-Russia prisoner exchange, Russia is tamed and the end of its war against Ukraine may be near.Western leaders, including such intellectually mismatched people as U. S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, praised the exchange as a mutual success for both countries.
That is plain wrong. There was nothing equal about it. If anything, Russia is still getting away with anything it wants.
Look at the list of prisoners the countries exchanged. Of 35 people Russia demanded and received, most were soldiers, militants, murderers, and spies. Only 12 were Russian nationals. The others were Ukrainians who acted in Russia’s interests. Now look at the people Russia sent back to Ukraine. All were Ukrainians. Twenty-four were Ukrainian sailors that Russia brazenly captured in 2018 in the sea near Crimea, waters in the common use of Ukraine and Russia.
In May, an international tribunal ordered Russia to release the sailors, immediately and unconditionally. Did Russia comply? Of course not.
Instead, the Kremlin used the sailors as a bargaining chip and exchanged them for murderers and militants. And it didn’t just get away with it — it got praised for it. Consider Russia’s most desired man on the exchange list: Volodymyr Tsemakh, a militant from eastern Ukraine and a suspect in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which killed 298 people. Russia says it had nothing to do with this mass murder, placing the blame on Ukraine. Yet all evidence is to the contrary. Still, Russia demands and gets an MH17 suspect, who now will never testify in court. And still, unbelievably, Russia gets praised for the exchange.
No, this wasn’t an equal exchange. And Russia didn’t compromise. It simply undid a wrong, a tiny part of all it has done to Ukraine. Russia also tested a convenient scheme it can keep using in the future: capture innocent Ukrainians and use them to bargain for anything it wants. The world must wake up and take Russia for what it is: a nation guilty of the most heinous crimes against humanity, in Syria, Ukraine and other parts of the globe. It should have pariah status.
