Ukraine’s representative in Trilateral Contact Group: Militants demand to exchange Ukrainian captives for nonexistent prisoners

The militants demand to exchange Ukrainian captives for 600 people, half of whom do not exist.

Iryna Herashchenko, the representative of Ukraine in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group to resolve the situation in Donbas, posted this on her Facebook page.

According to her, on Tuesday morning she received a letter from the OSCE, which contained a response from the self-procalimed “Donetsk people’s Republic” to the offers of the Ukrainian side on the release of hostages.

“The militants write they reject the offer of the Ukrainian side on release of 25 hostages in exchange of their 50 people, whom they asked for. They reject our offer to give them eight so-called ‘military engineers’ to free our captives…. They require exchange under the “all for all” format… and give us a phantasmagoric list containing 600 people, half of whom simply do not exist, we do not know who they are and where these people are,” Herashchenko wrote.

She believes such militants’ behavior makes mockery of the Ukrainian prisoners.