Prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Russia or its proxies have been stalled for over a year-and-a-half. But in the last week, rumors have swirled that the two countries could swap prisoners again.
There is still no certainty whether the exchange will take place and, if so, when that will happen. However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Aug. 23 that he’s hoping the first results will come in the next several days.
It is not clear whether the word “results” refers to the actual exchange or an agreement on it.
Speaking to the media, Zelensky said he has been working on the exchange for two months now.
“I promised the Ukrainian people that we would return the prisoners, sailors, that we would end the war. I’m personally working on it,” Zelensky said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Many prisoners
There are more than 200 Ukrainians who have been illegally imprisoned in Russia, Russian-occupied Crimea and Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, where the Kremlin unleashed a war in 2014. Many international organizations and country leaders have called on Russia to release them.
According to Russian news agency TASS, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Aug. 23 that Zelensky and Putin have established a dialog regarding the swap.
The reason for progress on the prisoner exchange might be Putin’s Aug. 19 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Earlier, Peskov confirmed that Putin discussed the possible swap with Macron during his visit to France.
Peskov said that, although no concrete prisoners have been discussed, some steps are being taken in order to carry out the exchange.
Prison transfers
Rumors about the possible swap began spreading after several Ukrainian prisoners were transferred from their prisons.
First, Crimean dissident Volodymyr Balukh, who is serving a five-year sentence, appeared to be missing from his prison in Torzhok, a city in Russia’s northwestern Tver Oblast. His lawyer, Olga Dinze, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Aug. 16 that Balukh has been transferred to Moscow, possibly to Lefortovo Prison, where 24 captured Ukrainian sailors are held.
In November, Russian coast guard and special forces took the 24 Ukrainians prisoner along with their three vessels in international waters of the Black Sea, close to the Kerch Strait. Soon, they were transferred to Lefortovo. They face up to six years in prison.
Following the news about Balukh, Oleksiy Baranovskyi, the lawyer for prisoner Mykola Karpiuk, announced that his client had also been transferred from a prison in the city of Vladimir to Moscow.
Ukrainian civic activist Karpiuk had been sentenced to 22.5 years in prison in Russia.
On Aug. 20, discussions about the prisoner swap grew more intense after Russian journalist Victoria Ivleva brought food packages to Lefortovo for Balukh, Karpiuk and three more Ukrainian political prisoners and the prison accepted all of them.
Apart from Balukh and Karpiuk, historian Stanislav Klykh, activist Oleksandr Kolchenko and student Pavlo Gryb were on Ivleva’s list.
“I don’t see any reason for them to accept packages for people who are not there,” Ivleva wrote in a Facebook post on Aug. 20.
One day later, Ivleva discovered that packages for three more Ukrainian political prisoners, who were serving their sentences in other prisons, had been accepted at Lefortovo. They include journalist Roman Sushchenko and Oleksiy Syzonovych. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the third prisoner on the list was Yevhen Panov.
Soon after Ivleva’s posts suggesting that at least eight Ukrainians imprisoned in Russia might be in the same prison as the 24 sailors, several Russian media reported that Kyiv and Moscow were holding negotiations about the possible swap.
The RBK news agency reported that each country would hand over 33 prisoners. However, it remains unknown who is on the list.
On Aug. 23, the press service of Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova told the Interfax news agency that she had arrived in Kyiv for a one-day visit. The press service did not provide any information on the purpose of her visit. However, both Moskalkova and Ukrainian Ombudsman Lyudmila Denisova are heavily involved in prisoners’ affairs.
