The exchange of 200 prisoners of war on Sunday between the authorities of Kiev and the republics self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk in the East prorruso, has caused a wave of indignation in Ukraine because among those released included five exmiembros of the Berkut, the special forces riot police, accused of shooting at civilians who were demonstrating in the Maidán in 2014. The redemption, however, was held by France and Germany, the guarantors of the peace process of Minsk, as a good step towards the solution of the armed conflict.
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An exchange of prisoners between Kiev and Moscow marked a turning key in the conflict Ukrainian Ukraine and the separatist leaders concluded a lot of exchange of prisoners, The defeat of the Berkut
Despite the tense relations between Ukraine and the republics rebels of Donetsk and Lugansk, this Sunday was the first direct exchange of the prisoners in the past two years between the Government in Kiev and separatist pro-Russian. The exchange is interpreted as a step to solve the conflict from 2014 faces Kiev and the Kremlin in the theater of operations in the East of Ukraine, well, you should preludiar the return home of the rest of the detainees, said yesterday the presidential office of ukraine.
This exchange has been made possible after president Ukrainian, Volodímir Zelenski, managed to force a meeting, on the 9th of December in Paris, the quartet of Normandy (Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France), the format diplomat to implement the agreements of Minsk in 2015. The appointment of Paris, in which participated also the German chancellor Angela Merkel and her counterparts French, Emmanuel Macron, and Russian, Vladimir Putin, was the first movement of Zelenski to unlock the situation since he came to power in April.
The main cause of the open Maidán
Sergey Gorbatiuk, former chief of the department of special investigations of the office of the Prosecutor General of ukraine, believes that the redemption of the five exmiembros forces Berkut (Eagle) will lead to the closure of the main causes open of the Maidán, where it produced the largest number of dead and wounded. In addition, 11 other men accused of the bombings were also released yesterday in Odessa to be exchanged in the east of Ukraine. In total, Kiev has received 76 people (12 military and 64 civilian). The republics self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk welcomed 61 and 63 people, among them Russian citizens. The exchange is performed in a step near Horlivka (Donetsk).
Macron and Merkel welcomed the exchange of prisoners “in accordance with the commitment, acquired on 9 December at the Paris summit” and urged “the exchange of all prisoners related to the conflict’, announced the Elysee palace, in a joint statement. The two countries guarantors also requested “full access of international organizations to all persons detained”, reports France Presse.
In Ukraine, the choice of the prisoners delivered by Kiev to the separatists —among them, persons convicted or indicted on crimes of blood— has provoked a wave of indignation.
The most controversial are five expolicías of the Berkut, troops of the special intervention police riot, arrested for their involvement in the bloody repression of the demonstrations proeuropeas of the Maidán, 2014 —a few months before the start of the war in the East— that left a hundred dead. Also were on the list three men who committed a deadly blast in Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian) in February 2015.
Sentence Sentsov
The families of the protesters killed in the Maidán published a letter addressed to Zelenski, in which they call attention to the fact that the expolicías are not involved in the war in the East and that, therefore, should not form part of the exchange; they noted, furthermore, that its release could trigger a new wave of anti-government protests.
The filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, Sakharov prize in 2018, is also among those that condemned the redemption and calling it “real killers” to the expolicías of the special forces was released.
Sentsov was sentenced in Russia to 20 years in prison for terrorism —was one of the main critics of the annexation of Crimea by Moscow— and was released in September.
To achieve the freedom of the five Berkut, the prosecutor general of Ukraine Ruslan Riaboshapka, replaced the entire group of attorneys that took the case and appointed a new one, which asked for the release of the expolicías so that it could be made to the covenant. Yevguenia Zakrévskaya, lawyer of the families of the victims, stated that they had changed the tax because they wanted to bring the process to its ultimate consequences, while Alexei Donski, head of the group of attorneys replaced, said he was “very embarrassed” by what was happening.
