The Contact Group’s meeting on the settlement of the conflict in Donbass has ended in Minsk. Darya Morozova, the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Donetsk People’s Republic, spoke in detail about this.

“The main questions of the recent meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group’s humanitarian subgroup on the settlement of the situation in Donbass related to the discussion of arrangements on the lists of people subject to the exchange. Unfortunately, the destructive stance of the official Ukrainian government has not facilitated the issue of detainees’ exchange.

Ukraine is not changing yet the rhetoric of its behavior with regard to the procedural clearing, and obviously does not intend to follow through on this process. In a similar counterproductive way, Kiev has made a proposal on the unilateral verification of detainees. However, due to the lack of the Ukrainian party’s credibility and their unwillingness to cooperate, our party rejected this proposal. At the same time, we agreed on the sharing of information by the next meeting to confirm the presence of persons for their possible inclusion in the exchange list.

I call on the Ukrainian side to take all possible steps as soon as possible to conduct a significant exchange of prisoners in the near future. We must give people the opportunity to celebrate New Year’s holidays with their families and friends,” Darya Morozova stated.