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Ukraine Begins Prisoner Swap With Separatists

Reuters

   Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern
   Ukraine have started an all-for-all prisoner swap, after which all
   remaining prisoners of the five-year conflict should return home, the
   office of Ukraine's president said on Sunday.

   The agreement was concluded by Russian leader Vladimir Putin and
   Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Paris in December.

   The swap is taking place at a check point near the industrial town of
   Horlivka in the Donetsk region.

   Russia's RIA news agency, citing a local official from the
   self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, said Kiev would hand over 87
   separatists, while Donetsk would return 55 pro-central government
   fighters.

   Kiev's forces have been battling separatists in the Donbass region of
   eastern Ukraine since 2014 in a conflict that has claimed more than
   13,000 lives. Sporadic fighting continues despite a ceasefire
   agreement.

   There have been several prisoner exchanges between Kiev and the rebels.
   In the last swap, conducted in December 2017, Ukraine handed over about
   300 captives to pro-Russian separatists and took back around 70.

   Relations between Ukraine and Russia collapsed following Moscow's
   annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, and its subsequent support
   for separatists in the eastern Donbass region.

   President Zelenskiy won a landslide election victory in April promising
   to end the conflict.

   Widely criticized domestically for his plan to grant special status to
   Donbass to help end the five-year conflict, Zelenskiy's latest actions
   have given rise to cautious optimism.

   In September, after a carefully negotiated rapprochement, Russia and
   Ukraine swapped dozens of prisoners. The move brought Western praise
   and hopes that relations between Moscow and Kiev could thaw.

   The released Ukrainians included sailors detained by Russia during a
   clash in waters off Crimea last year, and filmmaker Oleg Sentsov,
   jailed in Russia.

   The meeting of Ukrainian, Russian, German and French leaders earlier
   this month in Paris renewed optimism for a resolution to the conflict,
   and confirmed the relevance of an early peace agreement signed in
   Belarusian capital Minsk in 2015.

   Relations between the two countries are also unlikely to be aggravated
   by a dispute in the gas sector, where Kiev and Moscow are arguing about
   a new transit contract to replace the current agreement which expires
   at the end of the year.

   Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of using natural gas supplies to
   put pressure on the neighboring state, but last week the parties
   managed to agree on the main points of a new deal.