Pro-Russia separatists and the Kyiv government carried out a landmark prisoner swap of Ukrainian soldiers in exchange for Ukraine-held separatists on Sunday near the rebel-controlled town of Gorlivka.
It is unclear exactly how many people were involved in the swap, but officials and Russian press previously said separatists would get 87 prisoners while 55 people would be handed over to Kyiv.
The exchange was agreed upon by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Paris in December, in a meeting that France and Germany helped broker.
The swap took place in the rebel-controlled Donetsk region. “At the Mayorske checkpoint the process of releasing detained persons has begun,” the official Twitter account of the Ukrainian president said on Sunday.
The all-for-all prisoner exchange has been seen as a sign of the gradual thaw between Moscow and Kyiv after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and the years-long conflict in eastern Ukraine that killed some 13,000 people.
“We are all waiting for this,” the Ukrainian leader said on Saturday. He described the exchange as “the most difficult task this year.”
Many commentators hope that this could spell an end to the conflict, given improved relations between Zelenskiy and Putin, who has described the Ukrainian president as “likable.”
Who are the prisoners?
It was previously announced that some of the prisoners Kyiv has handed over are riot policemen suspected of killing protesters during a pro-Western uprising in 2014.
Their apparent release has caused controversy in Ukraine, with hundreds of protesters gathering in Kyiv on Saturday. Ukrainian officials have said that the riot policemen will remain on trial.
The identities of the other prisoners have not been revealed.
The last prisoner swap between Ukrainian officials and the separatists took place in December 2017. Russia and Ukraine exchanged 35 prisoners each in September 2019 in a move that required a great deal of negotiation. Russia released the filmmaker Oleg Senstov and 24 Ukrainian sailors.