An agreement to complete the approval of the lists of prisoners and begin prisoner exchange before the next meeting of the group on July 5 was reached in a meeting on June 21, Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s representative in the trilateral group on the settlement of the military conflict in Donbas, said.
“We have still not approved it, there are still differences on the list, but the verification process has been completed, everyone has agreed with it, and you know that party previously disagreed with it. But there are differences in the lists, the difference is 5-6 people… There is no problem on the Ukrainian side, they (the DPR and the LPR) have 15 people more on the list than we are holding,” Kuchma told reporters in Kyiv on Thursday.
The next meeting of the Contact Group will take place on July 5, he said. “We have agreed that we will resolve all these issues (the approval of the lists of prisoners) next week, and we should begin the exchange process,” Kuchma said.
Kuchma also said agreement has been reached on issues relating to the weapons withdrawal areas. “We again agreed that we will resolve this issue on Stanytsia Luhanska in the next seven days. Strategically, there is no problem there, but you know that every party is looking for some reason to delay the process. We also agreed that there should be three more items. Let’s hope that there will be some progress,” Kuchma said.
OSCE special representative Martin Sajdik earlier praised the work of the Contact Group on the verification of lists of prisoners in Donbas. He said the subgroup on humanitarian issues had done a lot of work. Viktor Medvedchuk, Ukraine’s special representative in the subgroup on humanitarian issues, said the negotiation participants had completed verification of the lists of persons held in the conflict area. “We should remove them from the list (…) it’s one of those stages that make us closer to the finish line, when the ‘all for all’ exchange lists are determined and, naturally, the dates of such an exchange,” Medvedchuk said.
