Simultaneous release of conflict-related detainees took place on 16 April in eastern Ukraine. Twenty people have been released from places of deprivation of liberty in non-government-controlled territories. Ukraine has released 14 people and transferred them to ‘DPR’ and ‘LPR’, the two self-proclaimed ‘republics’ controlled by the Russian Federation.

We publish the position of Center for Civil Liberties, a CivilM+ member organization, on simultaneous release of detained persons, which took place on April 16:

• The exchange is not “between Ukraine and the militants”, but between Ukraine and so called “DPR” and “LPR” controlled by Russia, because there are no official exchanges of prisoners in the ORDLO without Kremlin sanctions.
• The exchange does not take place within the “all for all” format, as the President’s Office reported. We are dealing with the format of “all confirmed on all confirmed”. Dozens of cases are known when relatives have official papers from the so-called “MGB”, the so-called courts and other quasi structures in the non-government-controlled territory about arrests or sentences in occupied Donbas, and during the negotiations with the Ukrainian side the non-government-controlled territory shamelessly declares that it does not hold these people.
• The Minsk agreements are not about an exchange, but about the simultaneous release of the people held by the parties. For several years now we have been forced to use the exchange track, which is an economic category that leads to an increase in demand for new prisoners, the introduction of coefficients during the negotiations, bargaining for political concessions in exchange for freedom. We think that the OSCE and the countries of the Norman format, France and Germany, should have reacted to that discrepancy long ago. People are not sacks of potatoes, they should not be changed, but released.
• We urge the public to respect the “period of silence” in the final phase of negotiations and not to spread the names of people to be released until the list is published by the Ukrainian authorities.
• We have to be patient, and if it is not enough, then respect for the feelings of the relatives and just wait for the official publication after the release.
• We are glad that the released men and women were able to return home, but we are also mentally with relatives, who today will not wait for the return of their loved ones from the closed prisons in the occupied territories of the Crimea and Donbas, as well as in Russia itself, where many Ukrainians sit behind the bars on trumped-up criminal cases. These people in the situation of coronavirus pandemic are among the least protected and are in one of the main risk groups. And now they may face a difficult challenge – to live to the moment of their release. We recall a number of urgent steps that 160 organizations from 45 countries believe the UN, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE and other participating States should take right now in this situation (Statement on the COVID-19 in closed prisons in the occupied Crimea and Donbas which is under Russia’s effective control)