Recently, the Ukrainian government has made many different statements about the progress in the Minsk process, but they all have one thing in common: a significant distortion of the actual state of affairs at the Minsk negotiating venue, DPR Foreign Minister Natalya Nikonorova stated on August 7.
“For example, the head of the Ukrainian presidential office expresses the hopes for a speedy exchange of detainees. However, Mr. Yermak completely overlooks the fact that even those exchanges that took place in December and April last year cannot be considered fully completed at the moment.
Kiev has never fulfilled the most important condition — full procedural clearance of the released persons, because without it these people continue to be prosecuted by Ukraine, their rights and freedoms have not been fully restored.
In addition, we have had many opportunities to see how negligently Ukraine treats the process of negotiating the lists and how many deliberate provocations Kiev carries out during the negotiations. For example, we face a situation when Ukrainian representatives put on the lists persons who are currently wanted, although they are not subject to any exchange. At the same time, the inclusion in the lists of those citizens who really should be on them is very selective: Ukrainian negotiators invent some categories of persons who are allegedly refused the exchange, although the Complex of Measures clearly spells out a simple and clear formula — the exchange must be carried out based on the formula “all for all.”
We call on the leadership of Ukraine to focus not on the ostentatious readiness to carry out the exchange, but on real work in this direction, because only through a substantive dialogue with us and in compliance with the Minsk Agreements it will possible to make real progress in such a critical humanitarian issue as the return of the detained citizens back home, taking into account the full restoration of all their rights,” Nikonorova stated.
