Russia, Ukraine Blame Each Other Over POW Swap
PHOTO CAPTION: FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) react after a swap, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at an unknown location in Ukraine, in this handout picture released January 3, 2024. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
LONDON, Aug. 12 — Russia’s human rights commissioner on Wednesday published a list of 224 Ukrainian prisoners of war that she said Moscow was ready to exchange but that Kyiv had declined to take back, escalating a dispute over which side is obstructing prisoner swaps.
Thousands of prisoners have been exchanged since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A May agreement to exchange another 1,000 captives from each side was one of the main tangible results of U.S.-brokered peace negotiations, and several swaps have taken place since then.
The latest dispute emerged Monday when “I Want to Find,” a Ukrainian government-backed project that tracks captured or killed Russian soldiers, accused Moscow of leaving POWs from Russian-held areas of Ukraine off exchange lists.
Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova denied that allegation, saying Moscow does not discriminate against prisoners from Russian-held parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. She said Russia had submitted three different lists of potential exchange candidates to Ukraine over the past month.
“For our part, we are ready for an exchange,” Lantratova said. “But Ukraine is refusing to take back its own citizens.”
Her statement included a list of 224 Ukrainians whom she said Kyiv had most recently declined to exchange.
Ukraine’s parliamentary commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets, rejected Russia’s account as “cynical lies,” saying Kyiv remains committed to recovering all of its citizens.
“Ukraine is always committed to bringing back every one of its citizens—and works toward this goal every day,” Lubinets said on Telegram.
Neither country publishes comprehensive figures for the number of prisoners of war it holds, and both have accused the other of mistreatment.
A U.N. human rights official said Monday that U.N. monitoring had documented continuing “widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees by the Russian Federation authorities.”
The same monitoring also documented torture and ill-treatment of Russian POWs held by Ukraine, but “on a fundamentally different scale,” the official said during an informal U.N. Security Council meeting. Russia’s representative rejected the allegations against Moscow.
(Source: Reuters)
