Russian Militants Did Not Provide a List of Detainees for Exchange

A regular Tripartite Contact Group (TCG) meeting took place via videoconference with the participation of Ukraine and the Russian Federation’s delegations and moderated by the OSCE.

The Russian-controlled DNR and LNR groups did not provide a list of people for mutual exchange, Tony Frisch, the OSCE coordinator in the humanitarian subgroup of the TCG, said. The Presidential office reported this.

The last exchange of detainees in Donbas took place on 16 April. The Presidential office said 20 Ukrainians had been released from captivity. In turn, the Ukrainian side handed over 14 people.

Ambassador Yaşar Halit Çevik, the Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, noted the achievements in the maintenance of the silence regime, which has been observed for almost three months and stressed the need to ensure its sustainable nature.

The OSCE representative noted that political issues that make the group’s meetings less efficient than one would like should not be at the forefront of the security group’s work. In particular, the need to address the issue of an updated demining plan was noted, which is especially crucial with winter coming up.

During the talks on the political issues, the parties discussed non-blocking of the TCG work and the proposals for an action plan for the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

Tony Frisch stated that the parties are ready to open two new checkpoints in the Luhansk region simultaneously in the first part of November to fulfil the agreements of the “Normandy Four” summit in Paris in December 2019.

Natalia Tolub