First deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, representative of Ukraine in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for Donbas, Iryna Gerashchenko, has said that the Ukrainian side is ready to transfer 20 Russians who are held in Ukrainian prisons in order to release Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia; this issue will be raised in Minsk on Wednesday, April 4.
“The working group will meet in Minsk on April 4 … The second issue that we will raise is the release of hostages. The Ukrainian side is doing everything to ensure that the next wave of hostage release is taken as soon as possible. But for us it is important to release not only those, who remain in the occupied territory, but also the captives of the Kremlin,” Gerashchenko told reporters in Kyiv on April 2.
She said that the Ukrainian side is ready to hand over “20 Russians who are detained in Ukrainian prisons for violating Ukrainian legislation and participating in the war in order to free Sentsov [a Ukrainian film director who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for terrorism], Kolchenko [Crimean activist Oleksandr Kolchenko] and our other prisoners.”
At the same time, Gerashchenko noted that in this issue “the will of the Russian Federation is very important.”
