(December 30, 2019) A plane loaded with captives freed by separatists landed just outside of the Ukrainian capital Kiev today as the Ukrainian government and the eastern separatists carried out a prisoner swap of approximately 200 people.
The prisoner exchange is seen as a potential confidence-building move the could help produce more peace talks.
Plane arrives near Kiev
President of the Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said to journalist after he greeted former prisoners at Boryspll airport close to Kiev: "It's wonderful, I'm so happy."
The plane was transporting 76 former captives. Included were 12 military personnel and 64 civilians. The group was met by a crowd of relatives some with flowers and balloons. Family members some with children rushed out to hug the former prisoners with tears and shouts of joy.
Anatoliy Semerenko one of the civilians released said to reporters: "Most of all I want to relax after all this and forget as soon as possible what was happening there."
Journalists among those released
Stanislave Aseyev and Oleg Galazyuk two journalists who contributed to the Ukrainian branch of Radio Free Europe funded by the United States.
Many Ukrainian nationalists opposed the exchange.
Many nationalists oppose any deals with the separatists period but they object in particular to freeing five police who had been captured after the 2014 rebellion that ousted a pro-Russian government and replaced it with a pro-Western government. The regime change led to rebellion in some eastern parts of the Ukraine that has been ongoing for years. The conflict the War in Donbass resulted in two breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk supported by Russia : "The War in Donbass is an armed conflict in the Donbass region of Ukraine. From the beginning of March 2014, protests by Russian-backed anti-government groups took place in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine, commonly collectively called the "Donbass", in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and the Euromaidan movement." The two areas have a majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
France, Germany, and Russia hail the exchange
As a recent article reports: "Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the swap as "positive".The exchange came after Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Zelensky held their first face-to-face talks in Paris on December 9 and agreed measures to de-escalate Europe's only active war."
Previously published in the Digital Journal
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