Ukraine Gate – Kyiv – June 22, 2022- Irina Vereshuk, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories in Ukraine, confirmed that Ukraine was able to return 103 civilians illegally detained by Russia between March and May.
She added, “We were able to bring back only 103 people during the exchanges we had, there were 14 of them in the past three months, ie in March, April and May, now I don’t do the exchanges, so, I don’t know what the business concept is, maybe it will be different but while I was in charge About the Coordination Headquarters, we refused to exchange prisoners of war unless there were civilians on the list who were simply handed over to us, if there were at least one or two women on the list among these civilians. Civilian exchanges are also taking place today.
The representative of the government pointed out that this is a big problem in general because there is no mechanism for the return of civilians, that is, it is impossible to officially pressure the Geneva Conventions, because we do not exchange civilians, and there is no such thing as a civilian exchange, Russia arrested them as terrorists to hold them in order to bargain for something, and we made it clear them immediately that it is impossible.
Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories in Ukraine, Irina Vereshuk, said that Russia is illegally holding more than 1,500 Ukrainian civilians in prisons, including volunteers, activists, journalists, priests, deputies of local councils and elders.
