MINSK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd August, 2018) Moscow is urging Kiev to exchange prisoners with self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR), Russian envoy to the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine Boris Gryzlov said Wednesday.
"Representatives of the DPR and LPR have fulfilled all their commitments on the exchange of prisoners. We are asking to stop these cynical games with human lives and, as soon as possible, carry out the exchange of all for all the people proposed and confirmed during Minsk talks," Gryzlov said.
Gryzlov said in May that Kiev was continuing to evade the exchange contrary to its obligations under the Minsk agreements.
The Russian envoy added that the Ukrainian authorities were trying to include people who are in no way connected to the situation in the southeast of Ukraine in the exchange process.
Kiev is still holding a number of people, whose exchange had been agreed in December, there are Russian citizens among these people, Gryzlov said.
Russian citizens are being used as hostages, the Russian envoy stressed.
In 2014, the Ukrainian authorities began a military operation against the two self-proclaimed republics, which announced their independence after a new government had come to power in Ukraine.
In February 2015, the parties to the conflict signed the Minsk agreements. However, both sides have since reported breaches of the truce.
