Ukraine, Russia hold talks on humanitarian issues - WP
Despite the war, Ukraine and Russia continue to negotiate on humanitarian issues. In particular, the countries agree on the exchange of prisoners of war, the passage of ships from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and the return of Ukrainian children.
This was reported by Censor.NET with reference to The Washington Post.
According to the publication, "away from the public and the bloody front line, Ukraine and Russia are still talking".
"The countries, which are now sworn enemies fighting a brutal war, manage to agree on several major humanitarian issues: the exchange of prisoners of war and bodies of fallen soldiers, the passage of ships from Black Sea ports, and have recently begun discussing the return of Ukrainian children from Russia," the article says.
In some cases, Ukraine and Russia use intermediaries, including Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the Vatican and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
However, most of the military exchanges are conducted directly by individual representatives, including during "tough and unpleasant face-to-face meetings" on the Ukraine-Russia border and in Istanbul, as well as phone calls, according to some Ukrainian officials involved in the discussions.
Furthermore, neither side wants to advertise the existence of these back channels.
"It is very, very emotionally difficult. They are enemies, but if we are talking about the negotiation process, this conflict of interest needs to be overcome. We understand that no matter what happens, no matter what kind of relationship we have now, we as Ukrainians are interested in the return of our defenders, and if we reject all channels of communication, we will not be able to do this," said Dmytro Usov, a Ukrainian military intelligence officer who heads the coordination centre overseeing the prisoner exchange negotiations.
According to the newspaper, given Russia's brutal attempt to overthrow Ukraine's government and seize its territory, there was little room for negotiations to end the war. "In March 2022, a series of official peace talks failed. Instead, Ukraine and Russia found another mutual point of interest - the exchange of prisoners of war," WP clarifies,
On the Russian side, negotiations on the exchange of prisoners of war are conducted by a coordination centre under the Russian Ministry of Defence, which also includes the Russian Security Service - FSB. According to Usov, some Russian politicians and militant groups, such as the Wagner and Akhmat mercenary groups controlled by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, have also lobbied for the release of specific prisoners.
The Geneva Conventions provide for the exchange of prisoners of war after the end of hostilities. However, Ukraine is keen to return its captured fighters as soon as possible due to evidence documented by the UN that some of them have been tortured. Neither side discloses how many soldiers have been captured.
Prisoner of war exchanges, as well as exchanges of dead soldiers' bodies, take place mainly in northeastern Ukraine in Sumy region, the only section of the Ukrainian-Russian border where Russian troops are not actively trying to advance. At the same time, shelling takes place daily, and usually a ceasefire is declared during any "bargaining", the journalists add.
"About twice a month, refrigerated vans filled with bodies are driven to the border by Russian and Ukrainian emergency workers who unload and reload the dead," said Oleg Kotenko, a Ukrainian official who until September oversaw the transport and search for missing persons.
Experts from the International Committee of the Red Cross are checking the documentation, and Russian and Ukrainian security officials are watching, he added.
Turkey became the main place to advance the negotiations when they "reached a dead end." It was chosen as a neutral territory after a short round of peace talks in Belarus in March 2022 was literally poisoned when several members of the Ukrainian delegation mysteriously fell ill.
Subsequently, a grain deal was negotiated. The Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine, Yuriy Vaskov, who took part, told the publication that there were no one-on-one meetings between Ukrainians and Russians at the time. Instead, negotiations were held in a quadripartite format: Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN.
It was then, according to Usov, that the largest prisoner exchange was agreed upon: 215 Ukrainians and 10 foreign fighters were exchanged for 55 Russian officers and Viktor Medvedchuk, an ally of Putin.
