Poroshenko claims all captives interrogated by Ukrainian side refuse to return to self-proclaimed Donbas republics
All the prisoners, in respect of whom a verification with a view to the prisoner exchange in Donbas took place, have refused to go back to the territories currently not controlled by Kyiv in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.
"I believe this information is important. One hundred percent of those regarding whom Ukraine has allowed the verification of the desire to return to occupied Donetsk and Luhansk, 100% have reiterated that they don't want to return," Poroshenko said at a news conference in Kyiv on Sunday.
Poroshenko went on to emphasize that those people had preferred staying in prisons in the Kyiv-controlled territory to "going to the occupied territory."
"They [the representatives of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions] were confused. They were lost. And now we are anticipating the meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group [scheduled for May 15]," he said.
However, Poroshenko claimed that the Russian side's constantly modifying its stance evidences a reluctance to release 'Ukrainian hostages'.
As reported earlier, Ukraine's representative in the Trilateral Contact Group on the Donbas settlement, Leonid Kuchma, received over the week a preliminary report on the verification of the lists of those captured during the hostilities in Donbas.
"Leonid Kuchma has heard a preliminary report on completing the procedure to verify the convicts who have committed crimes but who could be pardoned if this helps release those Ukrainians being illegally held in the occupied territories. This concerns several hundred people who do not want to be transferred to certain districts in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions," Kuchma's spokesperson Darka Olifer wrote on Facebook.
The verification in relation to those who are procedurally restricted in their rights and being held at Ukrainian penitentiaries continued from April 28 until May 12, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada human rights ombudsman Valeria Lutkovska and the head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' United Center for the Release of Hostages, Yuriy Kochanov, said. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) coordinated the efforts. The group, which has carried out the verification, comprised representatives of the Ukrainian ombudsman's office and the Ukrainian Armed Forces, alongside some OSCE representatives and several women, mothers of the convicts, who had committed crimes.
"Over this period of time the group conducted verification and travelled over 14,000 kilometers, visiting 19 Ukrainian regions and Kyiv, and 37 penitentiaries," they said in a statement.
Lutkovska said (and it had also been mentioned in previous OSCE reports) that the interrogation had been in compliance with international standards and that confidentiality rules and international humanitarian law had been observed.
The Ukrainian side expects that the report on the verification will be a key issue at the humanitarian subgroup's and the Contact Group's meetings in Minsk on May 15 and is making every effort to de-block the process of freeing hostages, Olifer said.
