Russia and Ukraine in controversial prisoner swap – BBC News

Professional-Russian separatists and Ukraine contain begun the closing allotment of a prolonged-awaited prisoner alternate, the express of enterprise of the Ukrainian president said.

Authorities agreed to the swap – aimed at improving family between the 2 countries – at talks in December.

The pro-Russian separatists reportedly got 63 prisoners in alternate for 25 Ukrainian detainees.

Family between the 2 countries deteriorated in 2014, when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

Russian-backed rebels then began an insurgency within the Donetsk and Luhansk areas of jap Ukraine. Extra than 13,000 of us contain been killed within the conflict.

Here’s the 2nd prisoner alternate between the international locations. In September, 24 sailors seized by Russia within the Kerch Strait off Crimea in November 2018 were launched and – controversially – a “particular person of interest” over the downing of flight MH17 which killed 298 of us changed into handed to Russia.

Sunday’s swap is taking express at a test level procedure the commercial town of Horlivka within the Donetsk predicament.

“At the Mayorske checkpoint the procedure of releasing detained persons has begun,” the decent Twitter myth of the Ukrainian president said on Sunday.

The pro-get up Luhansk Records Centre quoted a local decent saying the alternate had been carried out and that 9 of us will live in mainland Ukraine after refusing to amass allotment within the swap.

Ukrainian activists in opposition to the swap blockaded the exit to the penal complex within the capital where one of the pro-Russian prisoners were being held.

They objected to the liberate of passe members of the Berkut – the Ukrainian rebel police accused of killing forty-eight of us within the course of pro-democracy demonstrations in February 2014.

In a assertion on Saturday, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s express of enterprise said that defendants going via trial would restful must appear in court docket.