MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The completion of the all-for-all prisoner exchange is still pending. Russia's envoy to the Trilateral Contact Group for settlement of the situation in Ukraine Boris Gryzlov said in May that Kiev was disrupting the start of the prisoner exchange process in Donbass.
"This topic is constantly being discussed. It is raised in the framework of the contact group, and [Viktor] Medvedchuk is constantly trying to keep it running. Not everything goes smoothly, not in everything we manage to reach an agreement. This is very laborious and difficult work, Medvedchuk is dealing with it," Peskov told reporters, answering a question of whether one should expect the intensification of the prisoners’ exchange process, which has been inactive for more than a year and could also involve Ukrainian citizens in Russia.
Since 2015, Medvedchuk has been Ukraine's special representative for humanitarian affairs in the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, working on the issue of Donbass prisoner swaps.
The issue around the prisoners captured by warring parties during hostilities in Ukraine's Donbass between Kiev troops and local militias has been on the agenda of negotiations between the parties to the conflict for quite some time. The ceasefire deal reached in Minsk in 2015 stipulated, among other issues, an all-for-all prisoner exchange.
