On Dec. 29, 76 Ukrainians returned home from captivity in the Russian-occupied Donbas as part of a prisoner exchange. Some of the prisoners had been held captive by Kremlin-backed militants for nearly five years.
Their release should have been a clear victory for Ukraine. Instead, it has proven deeply controversial and divisive.
To secure their freedom, Kyiv released as many as 124 individuals accused of crimes like terrorism, mass murder, and participation in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has raged for over five years and cost roughly 14,000 lives.
Critics of the swap note that the individuals released by Ukraine will not be brought to justice. They were never tried or convicted of crimes in court, and were simply released and handed over.
Analysts and Ukraine watchers also suggest that the exchange provides more tacit confirmation of Russia’s direct involvement in the war and even the EuroMaidan Revolution that deposed Kremlin-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the Kremlin claims to have no role in the conflict. However, numerous prisoners released by Ukraine have no official connection to either the Kremlin-backed militants occupying Donbas or to Russia. Still, they were included in the Russian proxy militants’ exchange list.
Dirty dozens
No list of all the prisoners released by Ukraine has been published. Nonetheless, Ukrainian media and, particularly, Yuriy Butusov, chief editor of the Censor.Net news site, have identified numerous accused criminals released in the swap.
The most controversial individuals included in the swap were five former members of the Berkut riot police under the ousted Yanukovych. They stand accused of involvement in the killing of roughly 100 protesters on Feb. 18-20, 2014, during the EuroMaidan Revolution.
The five men — Serhiy Zinchenko, Pavlo Abroskin, Serhiy Tamtura, Oleksandr Marynchenko and Oleh Yanushevskiy — are all Ukrainian citizens with no direct connection to the Donbas militants or Russia. They were released from custody without ever being brought to trial. They were handed over to the Russian-backed militants at Mayorsk, a front-line crossing point near the occupied city of Horlivka.
The swap also included numerous other individuals with no direct connection to Donbas. Among them was Serhiy Dolzhenko, a former police inspector involved in deadly clashes in the city of Odesa on May 2, 2014. During the clashes, 48 people — mostly pro-Russian demonstrators — lost their lives when a fire erupted at the local Trade Unions House.
The criminal investigation into the fire accused Dolzhenko of organizing the act of provocation that led to the tragedy. Nonetheless, he was released from custody in August 2019.
Numerous individuals accused of being pro-Russian terrorists and engaging in subversive activities were also released to the Donbas militants. They included Viktor Tetiutskiy, Serhiy Bashlykov, and Volodymyr Dvornikov, accused of carrying out a Feb. 22, 2015 terrorist attack in Kharkiv that killed four people, including two teenage boys. All three were activists of the Anti-Maidan movement and were in contact with Russian security agencies, according to the Ukrainian investigation.
On May 9, 2014, a group of terrorists attacked the central police station in Mariupol during pro-Russian riots in the city, killing 6 policemen and 3 civilians. Three of the assault’s alleged participants — Yevghen Druzhinin, Oleksandr Stelnikovych, and Viktor Skrypnik — were released for the exchange.
Individuals accused of orchestrating terror attacks in Odesa were also included in the exchange. Among them were Oleksandr Shevtsov, Yevhen Podmazko, and Kateryna Fotieva, members of the Odesa Communist cell accused of committing terror attacks against the Right Sector nationalist group. Also released was surgeon Volodymyr Grubnik, who was allegedly involved in the bombing of the Odesa headquarters of the SBU security service in September 2015.
Ukraine also handed over pro-Russian activists who allegedly organized a series of bombings against trains and railroad infrastructure in Odesa and Mykolaiv oblasts in April-June 2015: Ruslan and Vladyslav Dolgosheya, Oleh Mazur, Mykola Selyatenko, Mykola Kazanskiy, and Vadym Shved.
Also released were Ihor Zhadan, a doctor accused of running a pro-Russian armed terror group in Kharkiv, and Mykola Ruban, an elderly man who killed a Ukrainian soldier with a bomb hidden in a honey jar in January 2015.
Ukraine also released two professional hitmen tied to organized crime who had been arrested in Ukraine. One, Artur Denisultanov, was arrested after a failed attempt to assassinate Adam Osmayev, a Chechen opponent of the Kremlin-appointed leadership of Chechnya who fought for Ukraine, and his wife Amina Okueva in June 2017. Okueva was later killed in October 2017, when an attacker fired on the car in which she and Osmayev were traveling.
Denisultanov is suspected of involvement in the assassination of Umar Israilov, a former bodyguard-turned-critic of Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, in Austria in January 2009.
The other professional hitman was Kharkiv-born Maksym Misiak. He stood accused of assassinating two businessmen in 2013 and 2014. There was no readily apparent political motive in the killings.
Ukrainian servicemen stand guard during a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia-backed forces near the Mayorsk checkpoint on Dec. 29, 2019. (AFP)
The exchange list also involved some more “conventional” individuals who fought in the ranks of the Russian-backed militants in Donbas: Ukrainian nationals Vyacheslav Biriukov (taken prisoner in Mariupol in June 2014) and Ihor Udovenko, as well as Russian citizen Oleg Doronin, who was captured by Ukrainian troops in July 2015 in the war zone near the town of Popasna in Luhansk Oblast.
Most notably, Ukraine released Rafael Lusvarghi, a Brazilian mercenary who fought alongside Russian-backed militants in Donbas as the commander of the Viking force, something akin to the militants’ foreign legion.
Despite leaving Donbas and returning to Brazil, he was lured back to Ukraine through a special operation by the country’s security agencies and arrested in Kyiv. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison, but the ruling was later overturned.
In May 2018, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty discovered Lusvarghi hiding in a Kyiv monastery, sparking a public outcry. Far-right activists detained Lusvarghi and he was subsequently taken back into custody by Ukrainian law enforcement. In May 2019, he was again sentenced to 13 years in prison.
During the prisoner exchange, Ukraine also handed over Russian citizen Ruslan Gadzhiev, a tank driver captured by Ukrainian forces in January 2015 during the Battle of Debaltseve, and Ukrainian Mykola Bytrymenko, a civilian originally from the Donbas city of Shakhtarsk.
In 2014, Bytrymenko revealed the positions of Ukraine’s 3rd Special Operations Regiment to the enemy. As a result, nine Ukrainian special forces soldiers were killed and six were taken prisoner, one of whom was later killed in custody.
Bytrymenko was arrested in Mariupol in 2016.
Reaction
Since the Dec. 29 exchange, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has faced harsh criticism for releasing so many people accused of serious crimes. Critics allege that the president and his administration have made a mockery of the rule of law and let murderers and terrorists escape justice.
However, some observers perceive the inclusion of pro-Russian terrorists and killers like the Berkut troops — likely at the Kremlin’s request, they believe — as more evidence that Russia was directly involved in the EuroMaidan massacre and numerous terror attacks across Ukraine after the 2014 revolution.
“Why did (Russian President Vladimir) Putin want eight Ukrainian murderers?” Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote on Twitter on Dec. 29.
“Two alternatives: He wants them to continue murdering for him in Russia or abroad. (Or) the Kremlin was behind their murders and wants to boost the morale among its killers. Both answers are perfectly compatible.”
Michael Carpenter, a former United States deputy secretary of defense, expressed a similar view.
“Glad the prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine happened,” he wrote on Twitter on Dec. 31. “It’s good news. But ask yourself: why would Russia want to receive Ukrainian policemen who shot and killed Ukrainian protesters in 2014 unless those policemen were on the Kremlin’s team?”
