Kiev Hopes For Return Of 77 Ukrainians From Donbas As 1st Stage Of Prisoner Swap- Official

Kiev Hopes for Return of 77 Ukrainians From Donbas as 1st Stage of Prisoner Swap- Official

Kiev expects 77 Ukrainians to return from Donbas within the first stage of the prisoner exchange, and will raise the matter on December 18 at the meeting of the Contact Group, Kiev's representative in the humanitarian subgroup, Valeria Lutkovska, said on Tuesday

KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2019) Kiev expects 77 Ukrainians to return from Donbas within the first stage of the prisoner exchange, and will raise the matter on December 18 at the meeting of the Contact Group, Kiev's representative in the humanitarian subgroup, Valeria Lutkovska, said on Tuesday.

The participants of the Normandy Four summit in Paris have agreed that an "all for all" swap should be completed by the end of the year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in the early hours of Tuesday that he expected 72 Ukrainians to return home in 2019.

"Seventy seven this is how many people we can return as of today. These are the people confirmed by Donetsk (53 people) and Luhansk (24 people)," Lutkovska said, as quoted by the UNIAN news agency.

She added that this would be discussed at the next meeting of the Contact Group, scheduled for December 18.

According to Lutkovska, the lists of persons are still being coordinated.

"All confirmed for all confirmed will be the first step, while all searched for all searched will be the second step. We know that there are people there, we have verification papers confirming that they are in detention facilities, but they have not been confirmed yet during our negotiations," Lutkovska added.