Russia and Ukraine finally made a major exchange of prisoners on Sept. 7, and two names on the list make it clear that the trade sets up substantive negotiations on the future of eastern Ukraine.
Russian-backed separatists, who hold a substantial part of eastern Ukraine (also known as the Donbas), have been battling the Kyiv government for more than five years. The two sides traded 35 prisoners each; their reception in the two countries on Saturday couldn’t have been more different. The Ukrainians were met at the Kyiv airport by an emotional crowd of relatives and journalists – and by President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose bodyguards were pushed aside during the chaotic scene. In Moscow, Ukraine’s former prisoners, of whom 13 were Ukrainian citizens and the rest Russians, were bused away without ceremony; some of them face months of intelligence debriefings.
