Since the summer, Russia has effectively frozen the exchange of prisoners of war. The reason for this may be Russia's attempt to undermine Ukrainian society in this way. This was reported by the head of the press service of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War in Ukraine Petro Yatsenko to the Russian edition "Present Time", according to UNN.
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Negotiations are ongoing, work is underway. But, indeed, since the summer, Russia has actually frozen exchanges. They are not taking place to the extent they used to be
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When asked why Russia froze the process, Yatsenko replied: "I don't think anyone knows the answer to this question, we should ask the Russian side. We are ready to exchange, we have a lot of prisoners of war now. Our detention centers are filling up, and we don't need to keep these Russian prisoners of war at all. We would be happy to exchange them even tomorrow for our defenders."
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Yatsenko noted that the conditions in which Ukrainian defenders are held in Russia are much worse than those offered by Ukraine as a European country that adheres to the Third Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
"The reasons may also be that Russia is trying to undermine Ukrainian society, trying to convince the relatives of prisoners of war that exchanges are not taking place because of obstacles on the Ukrainian side. It is calling for some kind of mass actions. And in this way, they use prisoners of war as another lever of influence on Ukrainians," Yatsenko said.
He also said that Russia is delaying the exchanges and creating various obstacles.
"In May of this year, we had several large exchanges, now the last one that took place was on August 7. We were able to return only 22 people. There are various reasons for postponing these exchanges, and in fact, it is a kind of hooking in order to slow down this process and to be able to conduct some propaganda campaigns. We think that this is exactly what is being done," Yatsenko said.
Supplement
The last prisoner exchange took place in August. Then 22 Ukrainian defenders were released from captivity .
Since the beginning of the full-scale war, 2598 Ukrainians have been released from Russian captivity .