DPR Human Rights Commissioner Darya Morozova commented on the results of the recent talks of the Contact Group’s humanitarian subgroup.
“Taking into account the loud statements by Ukraine about their readiness to exchange detained persons with the Republics before Christmas, it was logical to assume that during today’s meeting of the humanitarian subgroup, the Ukrainian side would make every effort to unblock the negotiation process on this matter. Let me remind you that in order to resume a constructive dialogue, it is necessary that the Contact Group agrees on a road map for the implementation of the Minsk Agreements and the Ukrainian parliament approves it, which will indicate that Ukraine is committed to the Complex of Measures and Kiev fulfills its obligations to shut down the criminal prosecution against 50 citizens transferred to the DPR in 2019-2020,” Darya Morozova claimed.
She stressed that within the framework of the humanitarian subgroup, our side tries to get Kiev to fulfil its obligations regarding the “procedural clearance”. However, Ukraine avoids discussion on this issue in every possible way.
“Taking into account the stir among the public that Kiev provoked with its promises to carry out an exchange in the coming weeks, the coordinator of the subgroup repeatedly asked representatives of the Ukrainian side during the meeting whether there had been any progress in the “procedural clearance “of citizens released previously. In their turn, our opponents simply ignored all the questions and appeals of the coordinator.
At the same time, a Kiev negotiator raised the topic of sharing information about the detained persons. At that, she called this process ‘a negligible step”, which any of the parties could easily take. This message looks particularly absurd, since Kiev itself has not yet provided an answer to the request on the status and whereabouts of citizens, which the DPR sent back in March 2020.
The destructive stance that Kiev negotiators once again demonstrated allows drawing only one conclusion: Ukraine is not interested in conducting new stages of the exchange. And all their announcements and media appearances are nothing more than window-dressing,” the ombudswoman said.
In addition, during the talks of the Contact Group’s humanitarian subgroup, the Donetsk People’s Republic put forward an initiative to resume work on forming a unified platform for searching for people who have gone missing against the background of warfare in Donbass. It is extremely important for all the parties to the conflict to elaborate and launch such a mechanism. It will allow stepping up and comprehensively carrying out activities aimed at locating missing people and identifying bodies. In particular, it will allow establishing cooperation in the field of DNA samples handling.
The Republic already proposed creating such a mechanism at the negotiation venue and presented its version of the road map for the project a year ago.
“Then Ukraine took our proposals into consideration and committed to share their viewpoint on how to implement the project. Unfortunately, there was no response from Kiev representatives,” Darya Morozova noted.
She added that creating a unified mechanism for searching for the missing is a purely humane task, which one should not gamble on, and whose fulfilment will not bring political dividends.
“Therefore, I hope that Ukraine will not hamper this matter and will be able to respect the agreements,” Darya Morozova summarized.
