Representatives of the so-called separate districts in Donetsk region are not satisfied with Kyiv's prisoner-of-war swap proposals and demand the all-for-all format, claiming an "unreal" list of 600 people for exchange, Iryna Gerashchenko, Ukraine's representative in the Trilateral Contact Group's humanitarian subgroup and first deputy parliament speaker, has said.
“I’ve got a letter from the OSCE in the morning with an answer from the separate districts in Donetsk region and the so-called ‘commissioner’ on all our POW swap proposals. It says that they disagree with the Ukrainian side’s proposals that 25 captives be released in exchange for 50 their people they requested and our proposal to return them eight “sappers” to free our hostages, and demand the all-for-all exchange,” she wrote on Facebook on July 19 morning.
Gerashchenko says that the other side submitted an “unreal” list of 600 people who they want to be returned – half of them simply do not exit, “we don’t know who and where these people are.”
She says that the Ukrainian side is open to a compromise and ready to search for the people, but the Donetsk representatives discard all calls to “the logic, humanism and realism.”
“This is what terrorists are. And so are all who are engaged in such victimization of Ukrainian hostages – these are real Somali pirates wearing St. George ribbons [orange and black-striped ribbon used in Russia and Donbas as Russian World insignia].
As was reported earlier, a Trilateral Contact Group meeting on the settlement of the Donbas conflict in Minsk on July 13 yielded no response to the Ukrainian proposals as for POW swaps.
